Vaqi'at-i Bāburī - The Memoirs of Bābur, Volume 1

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PORTRAIT OF THE EMPEROR BĀBUR.
SLIGHTLY ENLARGED FROM A MINIATURE IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM
(MS. ADD. 5717, FOL. 52.)

EDITOR’S PREFACE

IT is matter of surprise that a book so replete with interest as Erskine and Leyden’s translation of Bābur’s Memoirs has never been reprinted since its publication in 1826. For many years it has been so scarce and costly that it is practically unprocurable. An abridged edition was issued by Caldecott in 1824, and another by Colonel Talbot in 1909, but it is high time that a complete reprint should be made accessible to the public. The style of the translation, though somewhat old fashioned, is vigorous and direct, and is not disfigured by too close an adherence to the idioms of the original. According to Elphinstone, ‘The translation seems to imbibe the very spirit of the original, and the style is singularly happy, strikingly characteristic, though perfectly natural.’¹ The literary and historical value of the Memoirs cannot be estimated too highly, and as a picture of the life of an Eastern sovereign in court and camp, the book stands unrivalled among Oriental autobiographies. In the words of the same historian: ‘It is almost the only specimen of real history in Asia. … In Bāber the figures, dresses, habits, and tastes, of each individual introduced are described with such minuteness and reality that we seem to live among them, and to know their persons as well as we do their characters. His descriptions of the countries visited, their scenery, climate, productions, and works of art are more full and accurate than will, perhaps, be found in equal space in any modern traveller.’ According to another high authority,² Bābar’s ‘place in biography and literature is determined by his daring adventures and persevering efforts in his early days, and by the delightful Memoirs in which he related them. Soldier of fortune as he was, Bābar was none the less a man of fine literary taste and fastidious critical perception. In Persian, the language of culture … he was an accomplished poet, and in his native Tūrki he was master of a pure and unaffected style, alike in prose and verse. … Wit and learning, the art of turning a quatrain on the spot, quoting the Persian classics, writing a good hand, or singing a good song were highly appreciated in Bābar’s world, as much perhaps as valour, and infinitely more than virtue. Bābar himself will break off in the middle of a tragic story to quote a verse, and he found leisure in the thick of his difficulties and dangers to compose an ode on his misfortunes. His battles as well as his orgies were humanized by a breath of poetry.

‘Hence his Memoirs are no rough soldier’s diary, full of marches and counter-marches; … they contain the personal impressions and acute reflections of a cultivated man of the world, well read in Eastern literature, a close and curious observer, quick in perception, a discerning judge of persons, and a devoted lover of nature. … The utter frankness of self-revelation, the unconscious portraiture of all his virtues and follies; his obvious truthfulness and fine sense of honour give the Memoirs an authority which is equal to their charm.’

Pavet de Courteille, a translator of the Memoirs, says of him:¹ ‘D’une persévérance à toute épreuve, doué d’une résolution inflexible, brave de sa personne, alliant la ruse à l’audace, libéral et même magnifique dans ses dons, sachant punir, et pardonner au besoin, habile homme de guerre, général prévoyant, très capable de commander une armée et d’inspirer de la confiance à ses soldats, … administrateur prudent et consommé, qui ne méprisait aucun détail, ce prince n’a pas été seulement un conquérant, mais encore un fondateur.’ As to the value of the Memoirs the same author remarks: ‘Il abonde en détails des plus instructifs sur les personnages politiques de la fin du XV^e siècle de notre ère et de la première partie du XVI^e, sur les célébrités littéraires et artistiques de cette époque, l’âge d’or de la littérature turque orientale; surtout les hommes enfin, soit princes, soit chefs de clan, soit simples particuliers, dont le nom a mérité de ne pas tomber en l’oubli; il renferme les notions les plus précises et les plus dignes de foi sur la partie de l’Asie centrale que son éloignement de nous et sa situation isolée au milieu de montagnes inaccessibles et glacées … rendent presque inabordable pour le voyageur isolé; il ne néglige même pas les détails purement techniques relatifs à la faune et la flore de ces provinces reculées, sans oublier, bien entendu, les considérations ethnographiques.’

The Memoirs are in the form of an irregularly kept diary. The first part (A. H. 899 to 914) contains a continuous narrative of his early life and troubles, and was probably elaborated at a later date in India. The succeeding portions consist of fragments of a Journal written from time to time and often from day to day, rough drafts in fact, for an autobiography. The style of the later portion is generally inferior to that of the earlier, and bears evidence of a lack of revision, although certain passages, as for instance the detailed description of India, may have been written up, as Lane-Poole points out, ‘during the comparative leisure of Bābar’s last year’. As Pavet de Courteille observes in the Preface to his translation, the fact that the first portion of the Memoirs was written, or revised, in India (1520-30) is proved by Bābur’s frequent allusion to events that occurred during his residence in Hindustan, and his use of expressions that were only current in the cis-Indus region, and were so little known trans-Indus that he has to explain them, e.g. words to denote measures of distance, time, &c. Bābur was in the habit of recording rough notes of anything that struck his fancy, which were afterwards worked up in his Journal, as can be inferred from his remark on p. 245, vol. ii, of the Memoirs that ‘hereafter if I observe anything worthy of being described I shall take notice of it, and if I hear anything worth repeating I will insert it.’

Five gaps occur in the Memoirs, viz.:

(a) From the end of 908 to the end of A. H. 909 (A. D. 1503-4).

(b) From the beginning of 914 to the beginning of A. H. 925 (A. D. 1508-19).

(c) From the beginning of 926 to the beginning of A. H. 932 (A. D. 1520-5).

(d) A. H. 934 (April 2nd to Sept. 18th, A. D. 1528).

(e) A. H. 936-7 (A. D. 1529-30).

At the end of the chapters, where two of these gaps occur (a and b), the narrative breaks off suddenly in the middle of a sentence. In one of these the hiatus is supplied by Pavet de Courteille’s French translation of the Tūrki text, but the authenticity of this passage, which will be found in Appendix A, is open to doubt. These blanks in Bābur’s narrative, which afford evidence of the irregular manner in which the Journal was kept, have been partly filled by Erskine’s historical supplements. Pavet de Courteille points out that these lacunae are as Bābur left them, a conclusion which is confirmed by the fact that they occur in all existing texts both Tūrki and Persian, so that they cannot be attributed to the ravages of time, the negligence of copyists, or any other accident independent of the author’s will. Bābur has left no record of the last fifteen months of his life, about which little is known. Erskine in his concluding supplement has supplied almost all the available information on the subject, but this is necessarily meagre.

The principal Tūrki manuscripts of the Bābur-nāmeh are the following:

(a) The Russian Foreign Office MS. transcribed in 1757 by Dr. Kehr from an unknown source. This manuscript was used by Ilminski for the preparation of his Kāzān text printed in 1857, on which Pavet de Courteille’s French translation is based, and, although old and therefore important, it is not, in the opinion of Mr. A. G. Ellis (late Assistant Librarian, India Office, whose knowledge of Oriental bibliography is unrivalled), of very great value, being at times ungrammatical, and even unintelligible.

(b) The Elphinstone MS., which was purchased by Mr. Elphinstone in Peshawar in 1809, and after many vicissitudes found a home in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh. This manuscript, according to Mr. Ellis, was transcribed between 1543 and 1593. It is of high value, though unfortunately incomplete. Erskine collated his work from it.

(c) The Hyderābād Codex, which belongs to the library of the Sālār Jang family at Hyderābād, is the finest and most complete manuscript of the Bābur-nāmeh, and, though not so old as the last named, has proved of the utmost value in the preparation of a reliable text. Mr. Ellis is of the opinion that it was transcribed about 1700. To Mrs. Beveridge’s indefatigable energy and resource is due the discovery of the last two manuscripts, one of which (Hyderābād Codex) she has edited with much scholarly care for the trustees of the Gibb Memorial. It is a matter of great regret to me that I am debarred from using her erudite translation of the Memoirs, based mainly on the Elphinstone and Hyderābād MSS., now in course of publication.

There are three Persian translations of the Bābur-nāmeh, all of which are based on the same text represented by both the Hyderābād and Elphinstone Manuscript, viz.:

(a) ’Abd ur Rahīm’s translation (1590), which practically covers the whole text. This version, although it cannot possess the same value as the Tūrki source, faithfully respects the original text, and ‘such variations as exist do not affect the essential accuracy of the document’.¹

Of this translation a good many copies are preserved in the Public Libraries of this country, the Bib. Nat. of Paris has two (264 and 265), and there is one in my private library. The India Office MS. (Ethè No. 2989) is perhaps the most reliable. The British Museum possesses another fine copy (Or. 3714), illustrated with exquisite miniatures by Akbar’s artists, but it does not present a very correct text.

(b) The version of Payandah Khan and Muhammed Quli (1586), based on the same text, but incomplete. All the MSS. accessible in this country are imperfect, the best being B. M. Add. 6588 II, and India Office 913.

(c) The translation of Shaikh Zain ud dīn Khwāfī (1590), which only covers eleven months (1525-6), and was probably never completed. There are two copies of this version in the B. M. (Or. 1999 and Add. 26202), both of which are fairly good.

The only European versions of the Memoirs are Pavet de Courteille’s in French, and that of Erskine and Leyden in English. On the merits of the latter I have already enlarged. Pavet de Courteille’s translation (Paris, 1871) is fairly good, but he has generally sacrificed style to accuracy, and in some passages, owing perhaps to the faulty nature of Ilminski’s text, his interpretation is defective, and even unintelligible.

Erskine tells us in his Preface that his work of translation was based on a collation of three manuscripts, viz. (a) ’Abd ur Rahīm’s Persian translation, (b) Metcalfe’s copy of another Persian version, and (c) a Tūrki text (the Elphinstone Codex). There can be little doubt that the two Persian translations referred to by him are those numbered Add. 26200 (a good sixteenth-century copy of ’Abd ur Rahīm’s translation) and Add. 26201 (an inaccurate copy of the same version dated early nineteenth-century), which were among the manuscripts acquired by the British Museum after Erskine’s death. He also possessed a copy of another Tūrki text (B. M. Add. 26324), which, although fragmentary, is a very good manuscript, dated 1629, and part of a copy of the Persian version by Shaikh Zain ud dīn Khwāfī (B. M. Add. 26202).

Pavet de Courteille was of opinion that Erskine had only a perfunctory knowledge of Tūrki, and that he relied chiefly on ’Abd ur Rahīm’s Persian translation, which presents many difficulties of interpretation owing to its involved style, and the use of many Tūrki words and even whole verses, which are introduced without a translation, due to negligence, ignorance, or undue confidence in his reader’s knowledge.

Leyden’s MSS. passed into the possession of the India Office, but unfortunately, owing to the deficiency of records, it is impossible to identify them all. His MS. of the Tūrki text (No. 2538) is of little value, as it is a modern transcript dating from the beginning of the nineteenth century. As the Elphinstone Codex was in his possession, it is unlikely that he made use of this manuscript. It is doubtful if any of the India Office MSS, of the Persian version belonged to Leyden. If he can be assumed to have used any of them, it must have been ’Abd ur Rahīm’s translation. My special thanks are due to Mr. A. G. Ellis for his invaluable assistance in the preparation of the foregoing account of the texts and translations of the Bābur-nāmeh, and other bibliographical notes.

We must remember that though Leyden was associated with Erskine as joint translator of the Memoirs, the chief credit of the work belongs to the latter. Leyden translated less than half the Memoirs, and even this portion had to be substantially revised by his colleague. Erskine, on the other hand, contributed a valuable Preface and Introduction, supplied practically all the notes, and filled up the blanks in Bābur’s Journal with scholarly memoranda.

I have carefully collated with Erskine and Leyden’s translation Pavet de Courteille’s French version, which is based on a comparatively accurate Tūrki text, and any important differences of interpretation are indicated in the foot-notes. These have been ruled off from the notes on the text, and are distinguished by small italic letters.

I have thought it advisable to correct the old-fashioned spelling of names and places and bring it up to date, though the modern system of transliteration has not been strictly adhered to where the pronunciation was not affected. In spite of the great care that has been taken over the matter it is possible that a few inconsistencies may remain. The greater part of Erskine’s notes have been retained, but a few have been omitted as obsolete, some compressed, and others brought up to date. New notes have been added where necessary, and these are distinguished by square brackets. I have spared no pains to identify the animals and plants mentioned in the Memoirs, but the task is rendered difficult by the vagueness of Bābur’s descriptions, the corruption of the texts, and the mistakes of the transcribers.

My friend Lt.-Col. D. C. Phillott has kindly placed his unique knowledge of Eastern bird-lore at my disposal, and I have also found much useful information in Jerdon’s Birds of India (Calcutta, 1877), Sterndale’s Mammalia of India (Calcutta, 1884), Blandford’s Fauna (Mammalia) of British India (London, 1888-9), The Fauna of British India (Birds) by Oates and Blandford (London, 1889-98), Bonavia’s Cultivated Oranges and Lemons of India and Ceylon (London, 1890), and Watts’ Dictionary of the Economic Products of India, but some names of animals and plants still remain unidentified or doubtful.

The original map attached to the Memoirs, being incomplete and obsolete, has not been reproduced, and Waddington’s note thereon has also been omitted. A new map has been prepared under my directions by Messrs. J. Bartholomew & Sons to illustrate Bābur’s campaigns in Turkestan, Afghanistan, and India, and I take this opportunity to acknowledge the careful manner in which this work has been performed. A number of place-names occurring in the Memoirs defy identification owing to the corruption of the texts, the changes of nomenclature, or the fact that they are too insignificant to be shown in any map. I have, however, been able to identify the more important places on Bābur’s routes with the assistance of the following maps: Major J. Rennell’s map in his Memoir of a Map of Hindustan (2nd ed., London, 1792), Waddington’s map prefixed to the first edition of Erskine and Leyden’s translation of the Memoirs (London, 1826), Elphinstone’s map in his Account of Caubul and its Dependencies (London, 1839), Sir H. Yule’s map in Woods’ Journey to the source of the Oxus (London, 1872), Elias’ map of Central Asia in the Tarīkh i Rashīdī (London, 1895), Lane-Poole’s map in his Bābar (Oxford, 1899), and the Atlas of the Imperial Gazetteer of India, by Hunter and Meyer (Oxford, 1907-9).

Among the many works consulted in the preparation of my notes on history, ethnography and religion, the following may be specially mentioned: History of Bāber, by W. Erskine (London, 1854), referred to as E. B.; The Encyclopaedia Britannica (last edition); History of India, by Elliott and Dowson (London, 1867); Notes on Afghanistan, by Major Raverty (London, 1888); Oriental Biographical Dictionary, by T. W. Beale, revised by H. G. Keene (London, 1894); A Dictionary of Islām, by T. P. Hughes (London, 1895); Tarīkh i Rashīdī, translated by Elias and Ross (London, 1895), referred to as T. R.; the Provincial Gazetteers of the Panjāb and United Provinces.

The portrait of Bābur, which forms the frontispiece of the first volume, has been printed from a heliogravure plate, the property of the trustees of the Gibb Memorial, to whom my cordial thanks are due for kindly permitting me to use it. The portrait is a slightly enlarged copy of a miniature in the B. M. (Add. 5717, fol. 52). This portrait, the work of which is very fine, appears in Lane-Poole’s Bābar, but the reproduction was so much enlarged that the likeness has become faint and indefinite. From its style the miniature would appear to have been executed in Turkestān, and it preserves the Tūrki characteristics of feature. It is undated, but, if not contemporary, ‘it doubtless represents a tradition, and probably copies an earlier miniature’ (Lane-Poole’s Bābar, p. 7).

Pavet de Courteille’s version contains four long passages of doubtful authenticity, which are omitted in Erskine and Leyden’s translation, and these I have thought it best to include in this edition as Appendices A, B, C, and D. The first describes Bābur’s miraculous deliverance from imminent danger at Kirmān; the second supplies an account of Hindāl’s adoption by Humāyūn’s mother; the third furnishes a plain account of the battle of Kānwāha; and the fourth gives the story of Humāyūn’s illness and Bābur’s self-devotion. Appendix E contains short biographies of the joint authors of the translation, the material for which has been obtained from the Dictionary of National Biography (1st ed., London, 1885). A copious analytical index is provided.

I am under deep obligation to the late Mr. Vincent A. Smith, without whose encouragement and advice I should not have attempted the task of editing this work. My cordial acknowledgements are also due to Dr. Stanley Lane-Poole, Sir George Grierson, Mr. L. A. Storey, Assistant Librarian, India Office, and Mr. G. F. Finney of the Record Department, India Office Library, for much valuable help.

LUCAS WHITE KING.

ROEBUCK HALL, CO. DUBLIN.

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST
EDITION

THE following Volume was sent from India as it now appears, and reached England in the course of the year 1817, but was not then published, in consequence of circumstances which it is unnecessary to mention. It is thought proper to take notice of the fact, chiefly in order to account for the silence of the notes as to any works of a later date.

EDINBURGH, July 22, 1826.

TO THE
HONOURABLE MOUNTSTUART
ELPHINSTONE,
BRITISH RESIDENT AT THE COURT OF POONA,
ETC. ETC. ETC.

MY DEAR SIR,

WHILE employed in completing the following Translation, and in arranging the various prefatory and supplementary observations which accompany it, I have often indulged the wish of inscribing them with your name, as being the only appropriate return I could make for the perpetual assistance received as well from your advice and judgement, as from your valuable manuscript collections, which contain more information regarding the Geography, Manners, and Political Situation of the Countries that were the scene of the two first periods of Bābur’s History, than are to be found in all the printed and written authorities which exist in any other quarter.

That the work is still very imperfect, no one can be more sensible than myself. I might explain some of the difficulties which occasioned this imperfection, were such apologies ever attended to. Some of them, perhaps, should have deterred me from the undertaking, and others a more resolute scholar might have overcome. Had the work indeed been finished by the same hand by which it was begun, no such apologies would have been required. For the task, whether of translating or illustrating any work on Oriental history, Dr. John Leyden was eminently qualified, as well as for greater things. The number and variety of the literary undertakings of that extraordinary man, many of which he had conducted far towards a conclusion, would have excited surprise, had they been executed by a recluse scholar, who had no public duties to perform, and whose time was devoted to literature alone. As he was cut off in the full vigour of his mind indeed, but suddenly, and without warning, he was prevented from putting the last hand to any of his greater works; yet from the knowledge which you possess of his researches, you will perhaps agree with me in thinking, that the full extent of his powers cannot be justly estimated from anything that he has published. The facility with which he mastered an uncommon number of languages, ancient and modern, European and Oriental, the extent and ingenuity of his antiquarian inquiries into the Literary History of his own country, and even the beauty of his poetical genius, are surpassed by the sagacious and philosophical spirit which he evinced, in the latter period of his life, in his different Memoirs regarding the languages of the East, and particularly those of Hindustan, Bengal, the Dekhan, and Northern India. The acute discrimination, the various and patient research which he brought to the task, combine to render them, unfinished as they unfortunately are, and imperfect as, from the nature of the subject, they necessarily must be, one of the most valuable literary gifts that India has yet bestowed on the West. These, or the substance of them, will, it is hoped, be given to the world under the care of some one who may do justice both to them and their author. The turn of mind that directs to the successful prosecution of studies so remote from the beaten tracts of literature, is so rare, that even the unfinished essays of an accomplished observer, with all their defects, are of singular value, and inconceivably lessen the happier labour of succeeding inquirers.

If the share which I have had in completing and correcting for the press the following papers, which, however, are of a very different kind, shall enable the Public to benefit by one of the lesser labours of Dr. Leyden, of which it would otherwise have been deprived—or if it adds, in any degree, to the idea justly entertained of his learning, industry, and judgement, I shall be satisfied. I could have wished, on his account, that the execution had been more perfect. It would have been pleasing to me to have offered a tribute worthy of a friend endued with so many rare and valuable talents, warmed by every manly and generous feeling, and rendered doubly dear to me, as the only companion of my youthful studies and cares, whom I have met, or can ever hope to meet, in this land of exile.

Though I well know, that no man is so likely as yourself to be alive to the defects of the following pages, no European having seen so much of the countries described in them, or inquired so successfully into their history, yet I present them to you with more confidence than I might otherwise have done, as I seem only to pay you a debt which I owe in common with my excellent friend. And perhaps you will not judge me too hardly, should it seem that I am not uninfluenced by the vanity of letting it be known, that I too may pride myself in having shared some portion of your regard. Believe me to be,

Yours very faithfully,

WM. ERSKINE.

Bombay, April 12, 1816.

PREFACE

THE Memoirs of the Emperor Bābur, of which the following pages contain a translation, are well known, by reputation, to such as are conversant with the history of India. They were written by that prince in the Jaghatāi or Chaghatāi Tūrki, which was his native language, and which, even down to the present time, is supposed to be spoken with more purity in his paternal kingdom of Ferghāna than in any other country. It is the dialect of the Tūrki tongue which prevails in the extensive tract of country that formed the dominions of Jaghatāi or Chaghatāi Khan, the son of Chingiz Khan, the celebrated conqueror, which extended from the Ulugh-Tāgh mountains on the north to the Hindūkūsh mountains on the south, and from the Caspian sea on the west to the deserts of Gobi, beyond Terfān, Kāshghar, and Yārkand, on the east. It was, however, chiefly the language of the deserts and plains, as the cities, especially along the Jaxartes, and to the south of that river, continued to be, in general, inhabited by persons speaking the Persian tongue, while the inhabitants of most of the hills to the south retained their original languages.

The Chaghatāi Tūrki was a dialect of the language of that extensive division of the Tartaric nations, which, in order to distinguish them from the Mongals, or Moghuls, have recently, though perhaps erroneously, been more peculiarly denominated Tartars or Tatārs. The language really spoken by that great race is the Tūrki; and the language of Kāshghar, of the Crimea, of Samarkand and Bokhāra, of Constantinople, and the greater part of Turkey, of the principal wandering tribes of Persia, and, indeed, of one half of the population of that country, of the Turkomāns of Asia Minor, as well as of those east of the Euxine, of the Uzbeks, the Kirghiz, the Kazzāks, the Bāshkirs, and numerous other tribes of Tartary, is radically the same as that of the Chaghatāi Tūrks. The most mixed, and, if we may use the expression, the most corrupted of all the dialects of the Tūrki, is that of the Constantinopolitan Turks,¹ which, however, for some centuries, has been the most cultivated and polished. The others all still very closely approximate, and the different tribes speaking them can easily understand and converse with each other.

The Tūrki language had been much cultivated before the age of Bābur, and at that period had every title to be ranked among the most perfect and refined in the East. The sovereigns of the different Turkomān and Tūrki dynasties to the south of the Caucasian range, the Caspian sea, and the river Sirr, (the ancient Jaxartes,) though many of them had been distinguished encouragers of Arabic literature in the kingdoms which they had conquered, and though several of the earliest and most eminent of the Persian writers flourished in their courts, had still continued to speak their native tongue in their families and with the men of their tribe. When Sir William Jones decided² that the Memoirs ascribed to Taimūr could not be ‘written by Taimūr himself, at least as Caesar wrote his Commentaries, for one very plain reason, that no Tartarian king of his age could write at all,’ he probably judged very correctly as to Taimūr, who seems to have been unlettered, though, as to the other princes of Tartarian descent, his contemporaries, he perhaps did not sufficiently consider that two centuries had elapsed since the conquest of Chingiz Khan, and two more since the reign of Mahmūd of Ghazni, during all which time the territories to the east of the Caspian, as well as a great part of Persia, had been subject to Tūrki dynasties, and the country traversed by tribes of Tūrki race and speech; and that this period was far from being one of the darkest in the literary history of Persia. The want of a suitable alphabet, which he gives as a reason for doubting whether the language was a written one before the days of Chingiz Khan,³ was soon remedied. The Arabic character is now used, as it was at least as early as the thirteenth century,¹ the age of Haitho. The fact only proves that the Tūrki language was, as Sir William Jones justly concluded, very little cultivated before the Tūrki tribes entered those pro vinces which had formed part of the immense empire of the Arabian Khalifs, in which the Arabian literature still prevailed, and the Arabian character was still used.

I may be permitted to add, that there seems to have been some mistake or confusion in the account given to Sir William Jones of the Tūzuk, or Institutes of Taimūr. ‘It is true,’ says he, ‘that a very ingenious but indigent native, whom Davy supported, has given me a written memorial on the subject, in which he mentions Taimūr as the author of two works in Turkish; but the credit of his information is overset by a strange apocryphal story of a King of Yemen, who invaded, he says, the Amīr’s dominions, and in whose library the manuscript was afterwards found, and translated by order of Alisher, first minister of Taimūr’s grandson.’² He tells us in the same discourse,³ that he had ‘long searched in vain for the original works ascribed to Taimūr and Bābur.’ It is much to be regretted that his search was unsuccessful, as, from his varied knowledge of Eastern languages, he would have given us more ample and correct views than we yet possess of the Tūrki class of languages, with the Constantinopolitan dialect of which he was well acquainted. The preface to the only copy of the complete Memoirs of Taimūr which I have met with in Persian, and which is at present in my possession, gives an account of the work, and of the translation from the original Tūrki into the Persian tongue; but does not describe the original as having been found in the library of a King of Yemen, but of Jaaffer, the Turkish Pasha of Yemen. Now, Sir Henry Middleton, in the year 1610, met with a Jaffer Basha, a Turk, in the government of Senna,¹ or Yemen. It is curious, too, that we are told by the author of the Tārīkh i dilkushā, that a copy of the Memoirs, kept in Taimūr’s family with great care and reverence, fell into the hands of the Sultan of Constantinople, who suffered copies of it to be made. Some confused recollection of these facts seems to have been working in the mind of Sir William Jones’s informant, and to have produced the misstatements of his memorial. The mistake of a copyist writing Pādshah (king) for Pasha, might have produced part of the error.

The Tūzuk, or Memoirs themselves, contain the history of Tamerlane, in the form of annals, and conclude with the Institutes, which have been translated by Major Davy and Dr. Joseph White.² The Persian translation, in the manuscript to which I have alluded, differs considerably in style from the one published by the learned professor, which is an additional proof that there was a Tūrki original of some kind, from which both translations were made; a fact confirmed by the number of Tūrki words which are scattered over both translations; in which respect the Persian translation of Bābur’s Memoirs strongly resembles them. Whether these Memoirs of Taimūr are the annals written by Tamerlane, or under his inspection in the manner described by Sherīf-ed-din Ali Yezdi in his preface,³ I have not examined the manuscript with sufficient care to venture to affirm or deny. They contain, in the earlier part of Taimūr’s life, several little anecdotes, which have much the air of autobiography; while throughout there are many passages in a more rhetorical style than we should expect from that rough and vigorous conqueror; but that they are a work translated from the Tūrki, the same that has long passed in the East as being the production of Tamerlane, which Dr. White, in his preface, regrets could no longer be found, and for which Sir William Jones sought in vain, there seems no reason to doubt. I confess that the hypothesis of the Nawāb Muzaffer Jung appears to me the most probable, that they were written, not by the Emperor, but by Hindu Shah, Taimūr’s favourite, under the direction of Taimūr¹ himself. If the European public are not already satiated with works on Oriental history, they might easily be translated.

The period between the death of Tamerlane and that of Bābur formed the golden age of Tūrki literature. From every page of the following Memoirs it will be seen that the spirit and enthusiasm with which Persian poetry and learning were then cultivated had extended itself to the Tūrki. I do not find that any works on law, theology, or metaphysics, were written in that tongue. But the number of poems of various measures, and on various subjects, the number of treatises on prosody and the art of poetry, on rhetoric, on music, and on other popular subjects, is very considerable. The palm of excellence in Tūrki verse has long been unanimously assigned to Ali Sher Beg Nawāi, the most eminent nobleman in the court of Sultan Hussain Mirza Baikera, of Khorasān, and the most illustrious and enlightened patron of literature and the fine arts that perhaps ever flourished in the East. Many of the principal literary works of that age are dedicated to him. He is often praised by Bābur in the following Memoirs, and his¹ own productions in the Tūrki language were long much read and admired in Māweralnaher and Khorasān, and are not yet forgotten. Many Tūrki princes were themselves poets; and although the incursions of barbarians, and the confusion and unsettled state of their country for the last three centuries, have broken the continuity of the literary exertions of the Tūrki nations, they still cling with uncommon affection to their native tongue, which they prefer extremely to the Persian for its powers of natural and picturesque expression; and they peruse the productions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with a delight that reminds us of the affection of the Welsh, or of the Highlanders of Scotland, for their native strains. Unfortunately, however, as the Mullas, or schoolmasters, in the cities of the countries north of the Oxus, regard the Arabic as the language of science, and the Persian as the language of taste, and measure their own proficiency, as scholars and men of letters, chiefly by the extent of their acquaintance with the language and literature of Arabia and Persia, the earlier works written in the Tūrki language run some risk of being lost, unless speedily collected. From these causes, and from the air of literary superiority which a knowledge of Persian confers, few works are now written in Tūrki, even in Tūrki countries. In the great cities of Samarkand and Bokhāra, though chiefly inhabited by men of Tūrki extraction, Persian is the language of business. Though the present royal family of Persia are Tūrks, and though Tūrki is the ordinary language spoken in their families, and even at their¹ court, as well as by one-half of the population of Persia, particularly by the tribes around the capital, who compose the strength of the army, Persian is the usual and almost only channel of written communication; nor am I aware that any work of note has, of late years, been written in the Tūrki tongue.

The Chaghatāi Tūrki, as contained in the Memoirs of Bābur, is evidently not the same language which was brought from the wilds of Tartary by the Turkomāns in the ninth century, or by the Tūrki tribes who accompanied Chingiz Khan in the thirteenth. It has received a very strong infusion of Arabic and Persian words, not merely in the terms of science and art, but in its ordinary tissue and familiar phrases. These words are all connected by the regular grammar of the Tūrki; but so extensive is the adoption of foreign terms, that perhaps two words in nine in the Chaghatāi dialect may be originally derived from a Persian or Arabic root. The language itself is, however, remarkable for clearness, simplicity, and force; the style far less adorned than that of the modern Persian, and as free from metaphor and hyperbole as that of a good English or French historian; and on the whole the Tūrki bears much more resemblance to the good sense of Europe than to the rhetorical parade of Asia. The style of all Tūrki productions that I have ever happened to meet with, is remarkable for its downright and picturesque naïveté of expression.

It is not difficult to discover how these Persian words flowed into the Tūrki language. The cities of Samarkand, Bokhāra, Akhsi, Andejān, and Tāshkend, as well as the other towns to the north of the Oxus and Jaxartes, were chiefly inhabited by Persians, the Tūrks long retaining their aversion to the life of a town, and refusing to submit to the drudgery of agriculture for the sake of supporting themselves on the top of a weed, as they call wheat in derision. The cities and market towns in Māweralnaher were therefore chiefly peopled, and the grounds were cultivated solely by the old inhabitants, the Sarts or Tājiks, who had used, and continued to retain the Persian tongue. The courts of the Kings and Princes were usually held in the great cities, which necessarily became the resort of the chieftains and head men of the tribes that still kept the open country. The Tūrks, some time after leaving their deserts, had exchanged their former superstition for the religion of Muhammed. All religious, moral, and literary instruction proceeded from their priests and Mullas, men trained to Arabic literature, and whose native language was Persian. It became necessary for every Tūrk to know something of Persian, to enable him either to conduct his purchases or sales in the public markets, or to comprehend the religion to which he belonged; and the course of five hundred years, from the days of the Samanian dynasty to the birth of Bābur, gave ample space for that corruption or improvement of the language, which a daily and regular intercourse with a more refined people in the common business of life must necessarily produce.

Bābur does not inform us, nor do we learn from any other quarter, at what period of his life he began to compose his Memoirs.¹ Some considerations might lead us to suppose that he wrote them after his last invasion of India. That they must have been corrected after that period is certain, since in the first part of them he frequently refers to that event, and mentions some of his Begs as holding appointments in Hindustān. Perhaps, too, the idea of writing his Memoirs was more likely to have occurred to him after his success in India, than at any previous time, as he had then overcome all his difficulties, was raised to eminence and distinction, and had become not only an object of wonder and attention to others, but perhaps stood higher in his own estimation. His Memoirs may be divided into three parts, the first extending from his accession to the throne of Ferghāna, to the time when he was finally driven by Sheibāni Khan from his paternal kingdom, a period of about twelve years; the second reaching from his expulsion from Ferghāna to his last invasion of Hindustān, a period of about twenty-two years; and the third containing his transactions in Hindustān, a period of little more than five. The whole of the first part, and the three first years of the second, are evidently written chiefly from recollection; and the style and manner in which they are composed, appear to me far to excel that of the rest of the work; not only from the clearer connexion given to the various parts of the story, and the space given to incidents in proportion to their importance, but from the superior unity and rapidity of the narrative. This is, perhaps, in other respects also, the most agreeable portion of the Memoirs. During a great part of the period to which they relate, he was unfortunate, and often a wanderer; but always lively, active, and bold; and the reader follows him in his various adventures-with that delight which inevitably springs from the minute and animated recital of the hazardous exploits of a youthful A.D. 1519. warrior. The narrative, when renewed in the year 925 of the Hijira, after an interval of twelve years, partakes too much of the tedium of a journal, in which important and unimportant events find an equal space, and seems to be in a great measure the copy of one kept at the time. The same remark applies perhaps even more strongly to the greater part of the concluding portion of the work. In the earlier portions of the Memoirs we have a continuous narrative of details, such as a lively memory might furnish at the distance of many years. In the latter parts, trifling incidents are often recorded, which, if not committed to writing at the time, would soon have met the oblivion they merited. We are informed of minute particulars which can interest even the writer only by recalling particular events or peculiar trains of association—how often he ate a maajūn, or electuary—how often he got drunk, and what nameless men were his boon companions. These incidents, however curious as illustrative of manners or character, are repeated even to satiety. Yet these parts also contain the valuable accounts of Kābul and of Hindustān; he gives an occasional view of his aims and motives, of the management of some of his expeditions, and particularly of his conduct during the alarming mutiny of his troops; while the concluding portion of his Memoirs, where the form of a journal is resumed, appears to be hardly more than materials for his private use, intended to assist him in recalling to his memory incidents as might have enabled him to furnish a connected view of the transactions of that period. Still, however, all the three parts of his Memoirs, though the two last are evidently unfinished, present a very curious and valuable picture of the life and manners of a Tartar Prince, and convey an excellent idea of Bābur’s policy, and of his wars in Māweralnaher, Afghānistān, and India, as well as of his manners, genius, and habits of thinking; and perhaps no work ever composed introduces us so completely to the court and council, the public and private life of an Eastern Sultan.

A question may arise whether we have the Memoirs of Bābur at the present day as perfect as he wrote them; and in spite of the various hiatus which they exhibit, one of which extends to a period of twelve years, I am inclined to believe that they never were much more perfect than we now possess them. This opinion I entertain first from the fact that all the copies and translations which I have seen or heard of, are deficient in the same important passages; and next, from the remarkable fact, that the narratives of the different authors who treat of Bābur’s reign, are more or less particular, exactly where the Memoirs, as we now possess them, are more or less minute. In many instances there are chasms in his history which no succeeding writer has supplied. This would not have been the case had he written and published the whole events of his reign in a continuous narrative. It is remarkable too, that, in commencing his fifth invasion of India, he makes a sort of recapitulation, which would have been unnecessary, had the events alluded to been explained immediately before, as they must have been, had he written an unbroken history of his reign.

Bābur himself seems to have been satisfied with his labours, for, towards the close of his life, we find him sending a copy of his work from Hindustān to a friend in Kābul. The Memoirs continued to be held in the greatest veneration at the Courts of Delhi and Agra after his death. From some marginal notes which appear on both copies of the translation, as well as on the Tūrki original, it appears that the Emperor Humāiūn, even after he had ascended the throne, and not long before his death, had transcribed the Memoirs with his own hand. In the reign of Akber, they were translated from the original Tūrki into Persian by the celebrated Mirza Abdal-Rahīm, the son of the Bairām Khan, who acted so conspicuous a part in the reigns of the Emperors Humāiūn and Akber.¹ reign. His father, who was thus connected with the imperial family, and who was unfortunately too powerful for a subject, after having been goaded into rebellion, was killed in Gujerāt when on his way to perform the pilgrimage of Mekka. Abdal-Rahīm, his son, then only four years of age, was conveyed in safety to Ahmedābād by his faithful attendants, who sustained repeated attacks of the assailants up to the very gates of that city. He was carried from thence to Lahore and Agra. When he came of age, Akber bestowed on him the title of Mirza Khan, and married him to Mahbānu, the sister of Khan Azīm Goge, an officer of high distinction. At the age of twenty-one, he got the government of Guzerāt, and in his twenty-fifth year was promoted to the office of Mīr Arz (or Master of Requests). When twenty-eight years of age, he was made Atālik, or Governor, of Sultan Selīm, the Emperor’s eldest son, who afterwards mounted the throne under the name of Jehāngīr; and in the same year was sent into Gujerāt against Muzaffer Shah, the King of that country, who, after being compelled to take refuge among the Katti with the Jām at Jūnager,¹ had collected an army of forty thousand men, defeated the imperial generals, and seized Ahmedābād. The Mirza’s army consisted of only ten thousand, and he had received instructions not to hazard the safety of the province by engaging in battle. But he did not decline an engagement, and the armies having come close upon each other, Daulat Khan Lodi, a very gallant officer, told him, that now was the moment either to make himself Khān i Khānān,² or to fall in battle. Abdal-Rahīm attacked the enemy at Sarkaj,³ four or five miles from Ahmedābād. The conflict was bloody, and maintained with various success. At one period the battle seemed to be lost, and Abdal-Rahīm found himself obliged with three hundred men to face a firm body of six or seven thousand. Some of his friends seized the reins of his horse to carry him from the field; but he refused to retreat, and stood his ground with such bravery and conduct, that he changed the fortune of the day. Muzaffer in the end was defeated, and fled to Cambay,⁴ whence, after plundering the merchants of the place, he sought refuge among the mountains of Nadot.⁵ Muzaffer soon after again ventured into the field, but, being once more defeated, fled to the Rājpīpli⁶ hills, on the south of the Nerbudda. Where disobedience is eminently successful, the disobedience is generally forgotten, and the success only remembered. Abdal-Rahīm, according to the prediction of Daulat Khan, was promoted to the rank of an Amīr of five thousand horse, with the high title of Khān i Khānān. It is said, that on the day of battle, after he had distributed all his jewels and property among his troops, a soldier having come to him and complained that he had had no share in the division, the Mirza, to satisfy him, took out and gave to him his enamelled inkstand, richly adorned with jewels, being the only article which he had retained. In the thirty-fourth year of his own age, and of the reign of Akber, he translated the Memoirs of Bābur, which he presented to the Emperor, by whom he was highly complimented. We are told by Abulfazel, that they were translated at the desire of Akber when he was on a progress to Kashmīr and Kābul. The same year he was raised to the distinguished rank of Vakīl-e-Sultanet, or Lord Lieutenant of the Empire, a title very rarely conferred. It would be tedious to follow him to the governments of Jaunpūr, Multān, and Sinde, which he successively held. He completely defeated the Hākim (or chief) of Sinde, obliged him to cede Sehwān and some other districts, and married his son Mirza Irej to the Hākim’s daughter. A revolt having ensued, Abdal-Rahīm obliged the Hākim and all his family to repair to Agra. The long wars that followed in the Dekhan, particularly that against Ahmednagger, gave him great opportunities to signalize his military talents. During the whole reign of Akber he was employed in the most important commands, and the relation in which he stood to the imperial family was drawn closer by the marriage of his daughter Jāna Begum to Daniāl the Emperor’s son. His influence continued under the Emperor Jehāngīr his former pupil, and he was selected for the chief direction of affairs wherever great talents were required, in the wide range of country from the Dekhan¹ to Kandahār, to which last place he was sent with Sultan Khurram, afterwards the Emperor Shah Jehān, to repel the invasion of Shah Abbās the Persian King. The history of his life would be a history of the public affairs of the empire of Delhi during half a century. He died at Delhi in the year 1626 or 1627, at the age of seventy-two, with the highest reputation for talents, valour, generosity, and learning.²

The translation which he executed of the Memoirs of Bābur is extremely close and accurate, and has been much praised for its elegance. But, though simple and concise, a close adherence to the idioms and forms of expression of the Tūrki original, joined to a want of distinctness in the use of the relatives, often renders the meaning extremely obscure, and makes it difficult to discover the connexion of the different members of the sentence. The style is frequently not Persian, and a native of Persia would find it difficult to assign any sense to some of the expressions. Many of the Tūrki words are not translated, sometimes because they had no corresponding term in Persian, and sometimes perhaps from negligence, or, it may be, because they were then familiar to the Tūrki nobility of the court of Agra. But the whole is uncommonly valuable, and probably there are few persons now living even in Mālweralnaher, who could give an accurate translation of the original Tūrki of Bābur’s Memoirs without the aid of Mirza Abdal-Rahīm’s Persian translation. To account for this fact, it must be recollected that the study of the language of past ages is peculiar to that antiquarian refinement which exists only in highly improved times, and may be regarded as one of the last luxuries of literary curiosity. The learned Langlés, in the article ‘Babour’ of the Biographie Universelle Ancienne et Moderne, affirms that the Commentaries were translated into Persian by Abdal-Rahīm after being enlarged by Jehāngīr. I know not on what authority he hazarded this assertion, which is certainly erroneous. The Prince Selīm, who was afterwards Emperor under the name of Jehāngīr, was indeed twenty years of age when the translation was published; and, at a former period, Abdal-Rahīm, who was his Atālik or Governor, may have prescribed to him a perusal of the Memoirs in the original as an exercise in the language of his forefathers; but the coincidence of all the copies, the marginal notes of Humāiūn, and the nature of the work itself, may satisfy us that the other assertion is unfounded, and we certainly possess the Memoirs of Bābur, whatever their value may be, in the state in which they were originally written by their imperial author.

The English translation now presented to the public was begun by the late Dr. John Leyden, a man whose inquisitive mind left no department of literature unexplored. He found, I am uncertain whether in the Library of the College of Fort William, or in the collection of the Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone, a copy of the original Tūrki. Being delighted with the novelty and merit of the work, he began translating it with all his characteristic ardour. He soon, however, found difficulties which his instructor, a Persian Tūrk of Ganj, could not solve. I had fortunately some time before procured at Bombay a copy of Mirza Abdal-Rahīm’s translation, which is found in several of the public libraries of Europe, but of which Dr. Leyden had been unable to meet with any copy in Bengal. At his desire, I had begun sending him the sheets of a transcript which I caused to be made, when he was called to accompany the late Earl of Minto in the expedition against Java. This interrupted his labours, and his premature death followed soon after in August 1811.

Feeling a warm interest in the preservation of his manuscripts, and desirous that nothing which could add to his reputation should be lost, I wrote to our common friend, Dr. James Hare, junior, of Calcutta, in whose possession his papers then were, offering my assistance in completing the translation of Bābur, which I knew was imperfect. Perhaps I engaged too rashly in the undertaking. At that time I happened to have in my service the Persian who had assisted Dr. Leyden in his translation, and who had become pretty well versed in the language of the Memoirs. But before my letter reached Calcutta, Dr. Leyden’s papers and manuscripts had been sent home to Mr. Richard Heber, his principal literary executor, and I relinquished all idea of seeing the work completed, at least in India. Some years before, I had translated a small portion of the Memoirs from the Persian, and was now strongly urged by General Sir John Malcolm and the Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone, who were struck with their merit as a literary curiosity, to complete an English translation of the whole from the Persian alone. As both of these gentlemen had been on missions into the countries described by Bābur, and were peculiarly versed in the manners and history of the Tūrki dynasties, more competent judges could not be found, and their advice had its natural weight with me. I accordingly undertook the task, which I had brought to a close, when, in the end of the year 1813, I was surprised by receiving from London a copy of Dr. Leyden’s translation, which, in consequence of my letter to Dr. Hare, had been procured and forwarded by the kindness of that gentleman, who was then in England.

This acquisition reduced me to rather an awkward dilemma. The two translations differed in many important particulars; but as Dr. Leyden had the advantage of translating from the original, I resolved to adopt his translation as far as it went, changing only such expressions in it as seemed to be inconsistent with the context, or with other parts of the Memoirs; or such as seemed evidently to originate in the oversights that are unavoidable in an unfinished work. This labour I had completed with some difficulty, when Mr. Elphinstone sent me the copy of the Memoirs of Bābur in the original Tūrki, which he had procured when he went to Peshāwer on his Embassy to Kābul. This copy, which he had supposed to have been sent home with Dr. Leyden’s manuscripts from Calcutta, he was now fortunate enough to recover.

The discovery of this valuable manuscript reduced me, though heartily sick of the task, to the necessity of commencing my work once more. Being now possessed of the original, it was necessary to compare the whole translation with it. It appeared to me that, in many instances, Dr. Leyden’s translation was less accurate than the Persian, a fact not to be wondered at, as he had only recently begun the study of the Chaghatāi Tūrki, and no part of the translation had received his last corrections, or perhaps been twice gone over. I therefore examined the whole with minute attention, comparing it with the Tūrki and Persian texts, and made such alterations as I was persuaded my friend would not have disapproved of, had he assisted in the labour. The rest of the Memoirs I then completed by the aid of the Tūrki original, of my own copy of the Persian translation, and of another copy, which Mr. Elphinstone, with that readiness with which he invariably lends his aid to whatever has the semblance of forwarding useful knowledge, procured for me from Delhi, through Mr. Metcalfe, the British Resident at that Court. From this last copy, though much less accurate than the other, I was enabled to correct many errors, and to supply several chasms in the Persian translation which I previously possessed. The Tūrki original, which is very correct, is unfortunately incomplete. The continued narrative closes before the great battle in which Sultan Ibrahīm of Delhi was slain, and there is only one short fragment of a later period. Mr. Metcalfe’s copy of the Persian translation, though the most incorrect, is the most perfect of the three. It contains the whole Memoirs, with such errors and omissions alone as arose from the negligence of the copyist. My own copy has lost three leaves in different parts of the work, and is deficient in the journal of several months at the end. This last period is filled up on the authority of Mr. Metcalfe’s manuscript alone.

I ought to observe, that my own knowledge of the Chaghatāi Tūrki would not have enabled me to complete the translation from the original, and that I relied principally on the Persian. The Persian Tūrk, on whose assistance I had at first relied, had unfortunately left Bombay before I received Mr. Elphinstone’s Tūrki copy. With the assistance of some natives of Uzbek Tartary, who happened to be in Bombay, but chiefly aided by the patience and skill of my worthy friend Mulla Firūz, so well known to all who have made the antiquities of ancient Persia their study, I went over the Tūrki text, and compared it with the translation. I hope that few errors have escaped. But this long account of the origin and progress of the translation, which at first sight may seem needless, was rendered necessary in order to account for any want of uniformity that may probably be discovered in its various parts, and for any errors that may have crept in, in the course of the different transmutations it has undergone. The Memoirs of Bābur would undoubtedly have appeared to more advantage if clothed in the simple picturesque style, and illustrated by the varied erudition of Dr. Leyden, whose success in the study of languages has rarely been equalled, and whose industry was indefatigable. My aim in the following work has been limited to exhibiting that part of the translation which he executed, as much as possible in the state in which he would have wished it to appear, had he been spared to revise it; and to completing what he left unfinished. Dr. Leyden’s translation is without notes, except occasionally verbal explanations; nor am I aware that he made any historical or geographical collections for completing or illustrating the Memoirs. The translation is close and literal to a degree which many will think faulty, and which few works written in an Eastern language would admit of; but such closeness is not without its use, as the style of a people generally exhibits in some degree the dress of their mind, and often leads to more just conclusions regarding their habits of thinking, than can easily be attained in any other way.

Of the Historical Introduction, and of the Supplements which fill up the various blanks in the Memoirs, little need be said. They were compiled from such books and manuscripts as were within my reach. For the copies of Khāfi Khan,¹ and of the Maāsir al umarā,² the former of which was of great use to me throughout, I was indebted to the kindness of Henry Russell, Esq., the British Resident at the Court of the Nizām, to whom I owe many similar obligations; the copy of the Ālim-ārāi-Ābbāsi,³ which I have followed in the account of Bābur’s latest transactions in Māweralnaher, was furnished me by my friend Claudius James Rich, Esq., the British Resident at Bagdad. The curious anonymous history,⁴ which contains the singular anecdote regarding the succession of Humāiūn, I owe to Captain William Miles of the Bombay Establishment. Nor must I forget to acknowledge the use of a corrected copy of Dow’s translation of Ferishta’s Life of Bābur, part of a revisal of the whole of Dow’s translation of the History of Hindostān, by Captain John Briggs of the Madras Establishment, assistant to the Resident at Poona. The important and gross mistakes in names, in geography, and in the sense of the author, with which Dow’s translation abounds, makes it to be wished that Captain Briggs would communicate to the public the result of his studies, either by presenting a more accurate translation of that excellent author, or by giving an original work on these periods of the history of India, which he has studied with so much industry and success.¹

For the materials from which the Geographical Sketch of the countries north of the Hindū-kūsh range are compiled, I am indebted almost solely to the Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone. The description of these countries contained in geographical works and in books of travels, is very defective, and often erroneous. When Mr. Elphinstone went on his Embassy to Kābul, he exerted himself to procure, from merchants and travellers, such accounts as were to be had, of all the range of country as far as the borders of Russia. These he committed to writing, and even after his return to Hindustān and the Dekhan, he continued to add to his geographical treasures by conversing with such intelligent natives of these northern countries as happened to visit India, and securing the information which they afforded. Many of them he induced to write accounts of their own districts, or itineraries of their travels, in the Persian tongue. The unreserved use of the whole of these collections, with his own remarks and corrections, Mr. Elphinstone threw open to me, with that perfect frankness which belongs only to superior minds. Nor have I to acknowledge to him my obligations only in this part of the work. I received similar assistance from his accurate researches into the geography of Afghānistān and the Panjāb, and many of Bābur’s marches, particularly that of Chotiāli and Āb-īstādeh, with the whole course of his progress to Khorāsān and return from that country, would have been unintelligible to me without the assistance which his descriptions and maps afforded; and I may add that I have rarely had occasion to consult him regarding the manners of the age, or difficulties of the language, without feeling the benefit of the same extensive and accurate knowledge.

Besides my obligations for the use of his own papers, my thanks are further due to him for the communication of some valuable manuscripts of the late Lieutenant Macartney and of Captain Irvine of the Bengal Establishment, regarding the provinces to the north and west of Hindustān, from which I have freely drawn; and for procuring from Mr. Moorcroft the use of a very curious journal in the Persian language, kept by Syed Izzet-ullah, who had been sent by that gentleman on a route hitherto little frequented by travellers. The Syed went from the Sind to Kashmīr, thence across the hills to Leh or Ladāk, from thence to Yārkend and Kāshghar, whence he returned by Ush, Khojend, Uratippa, Samarkand, Bokhāra, and the Afghān country. This route traverses a very great proportion of the little-frequented districts so often spoken of by Bābur, and lies through the heart of that Prince’s paternal kingdom. The instructions of Mr. Moorcroft appear to have been so judicious, that the Journal of Syed Izzet-ullah, besides giving an accurate itinerary of the country through which he passed, contains many amusing facts regarding the manners and state of society of the inhabitants, and was found of the greatest service in the construction of the map.

The countries which were the scene of Bābur’s early transactions are so little known, and so imperfectly laid down in all our maps, that I was desirous that a chart of at least Ferghāna and Māweralnaher should be constructed with the assistance of the new materials afforded from different quarters, and my friend Mr. Charles Waddington of the Bombay Engineers kindly undertook the labour. The mode which he adopted for laying it down, will be best explained by his own Memoir. Having only one fixed point by which to correct his positions, the difficulties he had to encounter were very great. How well he has overcome them the map itself is the best evidence.¹ The additions and improvements made in the geography of all the country beyond the Oxus, but especially in the country of Ferghāna and the districts near Samarkand, will be visible by comparing his delineation with any previous one of these countries. Mr. Waddington laid me under the greatest obligations by the ready politeness with which, for a considerable period of time, he devoted to the completion of the map most of the few hours allowed him for relaxation from his professional duties; and it is not a little to his honour, that while still only in the first step of his professional career, he has exhibited not only a love of knowledge, but a judgement and science in the use of his materials, that would have done no discredit to the most experienced officer of the scientific corps to which he belongs. Of the following work this portion will very generally be considered as the most valuable.

Before concluding, it may be necessary to say something of the orthography adopted in writing Asiatic words. I have in general preserved that used by Dr. Leyden. The vowels have the sound that is given to them in Italian; i has the sound of the English ee; u, of the English oo; of the consonants the ghain is expressed by gh; the two kāfs are not discriminated; g has always its hard sound; shīn is expressed by sh; che by ch, which has the sound of ce in Italian, and j expresses the Italian gi.²

INTRODUCTION
PART FIRST
CONTAINING
REMARKS ON THE TARTAR TRIBES
AND ON
THE GEOGRAPHY OF UZBEK TŪRKESTĀN

THE Emperor Bābur was of Tartar race, and the language in which his commentaries are written was that spoken by the tribes who inhabited the desert to the north and east of the Caspian. On the very edge of this desert he was born, but the changes of his fortune in the course of his eventful life carried him sometimes as a fugitive, and sometimes as a conqueror, into various provinces of Asia. Some correct general idea of the character of the race to which he belonged, and of the geography of the several countries which he visited, is absolutely necessary, to enable the reader to follow him with pleasure in his chequered career. But the geography of the provinces which form the scene of his early story, and in particular that of the countries beyond the great river Oxus or Amu, one of which was his native country and hereditary kingdom, is peculiarly obscure; insomuch, that by one of our latest and best-informed geographers, it has been justly characterized as being ‘chiefly conjectural’, and as ‘remaining, to the disgrace of science, in a wretched state of imperfection’.¹ Some of these imperfections Mr. Elphinstone’s valuable collections, and the Memoirs of Bābur themselves, may assist in removing. But the principal object of the following remarks is to give such an idea of the natural divisions of the country as may render the position and extent of the various provinces mentioned by Bābur, distinctly understood, as some of them are not to be found in the geographical systems of the present day.

The whole of Asia may be considered as divided into two parts by the great chain of mountains which runs from China and the Burman Empire on the east, to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean on the west. From the eastward, where it is of great breadth, it keeps a north-westerly course, rising in height as it advances, and forming the hill countries of Assām, Bootān, Nepāl, Sirinagar, Tibet, and Ladāk. It encloses the valley of Kashmīr, near which it seems to have gained its greatest height, and thence proceeds westward, passing to the north of Peshāwer and Kābul, after which it appears to break into a variety of smaller ranges of hills that proceed in a westerly and south-westerly direction, generally terminating in the province of Khorasān. Near Herāt, in that province, the mountains sink away, but the range appears to rise again near Meshhed, and is by some considered as resuming its course, running to the south of the Caspian and bounding Mazenderān, whence it proceeds on through Armenia, and thence into Asia Minor, finding its termination in the mountains of ancient Lycia. This immense range, which some consider as terminating at Herāt, while it divides Bengal, Hindustān, the Panjāb, Afghanistān, Persia, and part of the Turkish territory, from the country of the Moghul and Tūrki tribes, which, with few exceptions, occupy the whole extent of country from the borders of China to the sea of Azof, may also be considered as separating, in its whole course, nations of comparative civilization from uncivilized tribes. To the south of this range, if we perhaps except some part of the Afghān territory, which, indeed, may rather be held as part of the range itself than as south of it, there is no nation which, at some period or other of its history, has not been the seat of a powerful empire, and of all those arts and refinements of life which attend a numerous and wealthy population, when protected by a government that permits the fancies and energies of the human mind to follow their natural bias. The degrees of civilization and of happiness possessed in these various regions may have been extremely different; but many of the comforts of wealth and abundance, and no small share of the higher treasures of cultivated judgement and imagination, must have been enjoyed by nations that could produce the various systems of Indian philosophy and science, a drama so polished as the Sakuntala, a poet like Ferdousi, or a moralist like Sadi. While to the south of this range we everywhere see flourishing cities, cultivated fields, and all the forms of a regular government and policy, to the north of it, if we except China and the countries to the south of the Sirr or Jaxartes, and along its banks, we find tribes who, down to the present day, wander over their extensive regions as their forefathers did, little if at all more refined than they appear to have been at the very dawn of history. Their flocks are still their wealth, their camp their city, and the same government exists of separate chiefs, who are not much exalted in luxury or information above the commonest of their subjects around them.

The belt of mountains that forms the boundary between the pastoral and civilized nations is inhabited, in all its extent, by hill-tribes who differ considerably from both of the others. The countries to the east of Kashmīr, at least those lying on the southern face of the range, are chiefly of Hindu origin, as appears from their languages; while the countries to the west of Kashmīr, including that of the Dards, Tibet-Balti or Little Tibet, Chītral and Kāferistān,¹ which speak an unknown tongue, with the Hazāras and Aimāks,² contain a series of nations who appear never to have attained the arts, the ease, or the civilization of the southern states; but who at the same time, unlike those to the north, have in general settled on some particular spot, built villages and towns, and cultivated the soil. No work of literature or genius has ever proceeded from this range. The inhabitants, justly jealous of their independence, have rarely encouraged any intercourse with the civilized salves to the south, and do not appear, till very recently, to have had much commerce with their northern neighbours. The labour of providing for subsistence, the remoteness of their scattered habitations, and the limited means of intercourse with each other, appear, in all ages, to have stifled among them the first seeds of improvement.¹ Yet even among these mountains, the powerful influence of a rich soil and happy climate, in promoting civilization, is strongly visible. The vale of Kashmīr is placed near their centre; and such has been the effect of the plenty and ease resulting from these circumstances, that that fortunate country has not only been always famous for the richness of its productions, and the skill of its manufacturers, but was, at one period, the seat of a considerable empire; and its historians furnish us with a long catalogue of its authors on every art and in every department of literature, some of whom are still held in deserved estimation.

Bābur was descended from one of the tribes that inhabited to the north of this range. That immense tract of country which is known by the general name of Tartary, extends over nearly all the north of Asia, and over a considerable part of the south-east of Europe. It corresponds very nearly with the ancient Scythia. The tribes that inhabit it differ from each other in manners, features, and language. Of these, the most powerful and numerous seem to belong to three races: first, the Mandshūrs, called also Manjūrs and Manchūs, to the east, who extend from the Eastern Ocean along the north of China. Secondly, the Mongols or Moghuls, who chiefly occupy the central regions between the other two: and thirdly, the people, by Europeans, and particularly the Russians and later travellers, exclusively called Tartars or Tatārs, and sometimes Western Tartars, names not acknowledged by themselves, but who may with more propriety receive their original name of Tūrks, by which their principal branches still designate themselves.¹

The country of the Mānchūs, containing all that lies east of the Siolki Mountains, and north of the range of Kinchan,¹ may be neglected on the present occasion; the influence of its inhabitants having been confined chiefly to China, of which they are now the rulers.

The Moghul and Tūrki tribes have exercised a far more important influence on the nations around them. The Moghuls extend over all the country between the Siolki Mountains and China on the east; the mountainous country from China towards Leh or Ladāk on the south; a line from Leh through the desert of Cobi to the east of Terfān, and thence by the Ulugh Tāgh,² the Ghiū river, and the Kūchik Tāgh hills³ on the west; and by a very indefinite line north of the Altaian chain on the north. The Tūrki nations have the western boundary of the Moghuls as their eastern frontier; on the south they have the Muz-Tāgh,⁴ the Belūt-Tāgh,⁵ the Hindū-kūsh, and the limits of the cultivated country of Khorasān down to the Caspian, a line drawn across that sea to the Caucasian range, the northern shore of the Euxine as far as the sea of Azof, including the Krim, and thence their western boundary extends along the eastern limits of Europe to the Ural and Altai mountains. Some Tūrki tribes, however, have settled even south of the Danube, and others far in Russian Siberia; and in like manner detached tribes of Kalmuks still inhabit along the Volga, and down to Astrakhān, and probably may be found insulated even in more remote situations.

In a country so extensive, there is, as may be imagined, almost every variety of climate and of soil; but by much the greater part of the land, particularly that to the eastward, is barren, mixed in many instances with sandy deserts, while the climate is inhospitable, so that the difficulty of procuring subsistence on one spot, or at a moderate distance from their habitations, has compelled the inhabitants in all ages to adopt a wandering life. The many noble rivers which intersect the country, of course supply numerous fertile tracts along their banks; but in the greater part of this region, the districts capable of profitable cultivation are too few, too remote from each other, and too much surrounded by desolate sands, to admit of the formation of a permanent kingdom or state devoted to agriculture sufficiently extensive to protect the cultivator, and to check the predatory tribes of the desert by which it would be surrounded on all sides. The cities that have been built, and the districts that have been cultivated, in the flourishing times of any particular tribe, have always therefore rapidly declined.

The country lying between the Amu and Sirr rivers (the Oxus and Jaxartes of antiquity), and usually called Great Bucharia, or Māweralnaher, though now overrun and governed by Tūrki tribes, was not perhaps originally a part of Tartary, and must be excepted from this description. It is a region abounding with fine tracts of land, defended by inaccessible mountains and barren deserts, and watered by numerous streams. The natural condition of this country is that of a civilized and commercial state, abounding with large towns; a situation which it has always rapidly attained, when its governors possessed sufficient power to secure it from foreign enemies.

The Moghul and Tūrki tribes, though now confined to the limits that have been described, have, however, successively changed the aspect of the civilized world. The Huns (whom their historian the learned Des Guignes regards as being of Tūrki race, though some circumstances in the hideous description given of them by the Roman historians would lead us to conclude that, with a mixture of Tūrks, they consisted chiefly of the Moghul tribes),¹ passing from their deserts beyond the Caspian, poured into the richest provinces of the empire of the Romans, and under the ferocious Attila, the scourge of the human race, broke the already declining force of that mighty people. Still later, in the tenth century, the rich and cultivated provinces of Samarkand and Khwārizm, at that period the seats of Oriental science and learning, were subdued by the Tūrki hordes. In the following century the Ghaznevide dynasty, whose dominion spread over great part of India and Persia, the dynasties of the Seljuks in Persia, the vassalage of the Khalifs of Baghdad to their Turkomān guards, and the final destruction of the Khalīfat itself, the successive conquest of Armenia, Asia Minor, and in the end of the whole Empire styled the Turkish, from its founders, attest the valour and enterprise of the Tūrki tribes. The Moghuls were unknown beyond the wilds of Tartary, from the age of Attila till the thirteenth century, when their leader, the celebrated Chingiz Khan, after having subdued all the neighbouring Tartar tribes, particularly those of Tūrki extraction, who, under the dynasty that existed down to his time, had possessed the ascendancy over the Moghuls, burst into the provinces of Turān, Māweralnaher, Khwārizm, and Khorasān, subdued part of India, reduced Azarbaijān, and a considerable portion of Persia, the Tūrki tribes of Kipchāk, and a great part of China, leaving those vast countries, which were much more extensive than the Roman Empire at the period of its widest dominion, to be governed by his posterity. His successors pursuing the tract of conquest, traversed Russia, marched over Poland, and poured their troops into Hungary, Bohemia, and Silesia; accident alone, perhaps, prevented the cities of Germany from undergoing the fate of Samarkand and Bokhāra, cities at that time the seats of greater refinement and politeness than any in Europe; and it has been truly observed that the disordered digestion of a barbarian on the borders of China, by withdrawing the Moghul armies from the west, may have saved us from the misfortune of witnessing at this day a Tartar dynasty in the richest countries of the west of Europe. The superiority acquired by Chingiz Khan, a Moghul, over the Tūrki tribes, has never been entirely lost. His empire, after his death, having been divided among his sons, who seem to have been accompanied to their governments by numerous families, and even by tribes, or parts of tribes, of Moghuls, who followed their princes, the chief authority in all the conquered countries continued for a series of years to be in the hands of that race; and even the chiefs of Tūrki tribes, if not Moghuls themselves, appear to have been ambitious of connecting themselves by intermarriages with Moghul families; so that, at the present day, the greater part of them trace up their descent to Chingiz Khan. The descendants of these Moghuls and Moghul families, however, being placed among a people who spoke a different language, gradually adopted that of their subjects, as is usual in all conquered countries where the conquerors are few and the conquered many; so that the Tūrks and their chieftains, being now freed from any dependence on the Moghuls, are once more completely separated from them both by government and language, and regard them as strangers and foreigners.

Whether the Moghul and Tūrki languages differ from each other essentially, or only as very different dialects of the same tongue, is a question which I have never seen clearly decided. Of the Moghul I possess no vocabulary by which a comparison could be instituted with the Tūrki.¹ An examination of the lists in the Comparative Vocabulary made by order of the Empress of Russia, or of those in the Mithridates of the learned Adelung, would go far towards deciding the question, which is one of considerable curiosity. If the Tūrks, as is probable, inhabited the neighbourhood of the Caspian as early as the days of Herodotus, by whom the Turkai are mentioned,² and if they always inhabited the country from Tibet to the Black Sea, their language may reasonably be supposed to have had some influence on that of their neighbours. But if, in addition to this, we consider the frequency of their irruptions into the south of Asia for the last fourteen hundred years, under their own name, and probably for a much longer period under that of Scythians; that one-half of the population consists of Tūrki tribes, or of Tūrks settled in towns, but still speaking their native tongue; that the most numerous race next to the Slavonians, in the extensive empire of Russia, are the Tūrks;¹ that several Turkomān tribes also traverse the wastes of Turkey, and that the Ottoman Empire itself, as well as the Turkish language, owes its origin to the northern Tūrks, we shall probably feel some surprise that a language so extensively spoken, and which seems to promise so rich a field to the industry of the philologist, should have been so much overlooked,² and even its existence scarcely known, except in the Osmanli dialect of Turkey, the dialect, to the antiquary and philologist, of all others the least valuable, as most widely deviating from its primitive form. The Chaghatāi Tūrki furnishes a variety of finished works, both in prose and verse; but that dialect having been carried to its perfection in the provinces between the Amu and Sirr,³ where the Persian was formerly spoken, is full of words borrowed with very little change from that language and from the Arabic. In the Tūrki of Bābur, perhaps the purest specimen now extant of the language of his times, probably two-ninths of the whole extent may be traced to an Arabic or Persian root. Specimens of the language of the different wandering Tūrki tribes, compared with the language of Bābur and with that of the Moghultribes, would enable us to form tolerably decided notions of the affiliations of the Tūrki and Moghul races.

Another question, which has been a good deal agitated, and which to me appears to have been erroneously decided, is that which regards the application of the name of Tartar, or more properly Tatār, by which we denominate these nations. It is applied by Europeans as a general term comprehending a variety of different tribes in the northern division of Asia, and is quite unknown to the inhabitants themselves, as well as to the Indians; which last, very improperly, call all of these tribes, as well as all Persians, and indeed any Mussulman with a whitish face, Moghuls. The term Tartar seems to have been first used by our historians and travellers about the thirteenth century. Joannes de Plano Carpini, who travelled A. D. 1246, informs us that the country of the Moghuls, in his time, not long after the death of Chingiz Khan, was inhabited by four nations (or populi), the Yeka Mongols,¹ the Sū-Mongols, or Water Mongols,² who call themselves Tartars from a certain river called Tartar which runs through their territory,² the Merkat and Metrit; and adds that all these nations speak the same language. Chingiz belonged to the Yeka Mongols, and subdued the other three divisions. All of these nations lived in the middle division of Tartary. Carpini, after describing his passage eastward through the country along the Sirr or Jaxartes, and the lands of the Tūrks whom he calls Black Kythai,³ adds, ‘On leaving the country of the Naymans’ (which was the last of the Tūrks), ‘we then entered the country of the Mongols, whom we call Tartars.’⁴ This name of Tartar, however, by which we are accustomed to designate Chingiz Khan and his successors as well as their empire, these princes themselves rejected with disdain. Rubriquis, who visited the court of Sartakh, Chingiz Khan’s grandson, about the year 1254, was cautioned, therefore, to call him Moal (that is Moghul), and not Tartar; ‘for they wish to exalt their name of Moal above every name, and do not like to be called Tartars; for the Tartars were a different tribe;’¹ meaning, I presume, the Sū-Mongols, conquered by Chingiz; and hence the victorious family did not choose to receive the name of their subject vassals. Rubriquis informs us that Chingiz Khan, after the union of the kindred tribes of Moghuls and Tartars under his government, generally made the Tartars take the advance, and that, from this circumstance, they being the tribe who first entered the territory of their enemies, and whose name was first known, the appellation of Tartar was by foreigners applied to the whole race, to the exclusion of the superior name of Moghul. It was by the united strength of these two tribes of Moghuls that Chingiz Khan destroyed the powerful kingdom of Kara Khita, and subdued the Tūrki tribes.

As, in the time of the early successors of Chingiz Khan, the name of Tartar was erroneously transferred from one, and applied to the whole Moghul tribes; so, in latter times, and at the present day, it is, with still greater impropriety, applied by European writers to designate exclusively the tribes of Tūrki extraction, who are in reality a very different race. The French, as well as the German and Russian writers, regard the name of Tartar as properly applicable only to the western Tartars. D’Herbelot, Petis de la Croix, Pallas, Gmelin, as well as the Editor of Astley’s Collection of Voyages, all agree in the propriety of this limitation. Tooke, who follows the best-informed Russian travellers, after dividing the country called Great Tartary among the Mongols, Tartars, and Mandshūrs, adds that the appellative Tartars ‘is so much misapplied, that, with some inquirers into history, a doubt has even arisen whether there ever was a peculiar people of that name. Under this denomination have been implied all tribes beyond Persia and India, as far as the Eastern Ocean, however differing from each other in regard to their origin, language, manners, religion, and customs. Now’, he continues, ‘that we are better acquainted with these nations, we know that the Tartars in reality compose a distinct nation, which originally belonged to the great Turkish stock.’¹ This opinion seems to be that at present universally received. The general name of Tartar, however, is not recognized by any of the tribes on whom it is thus bestowed. These tribes, who have the best right to fix their own appellation, know themselves only by the particular name of their tribe, or by the general name of Tūrk: their language they call the Tūrki, and if the name of Tartar is to be admitted as at all applicable peculiarly to any one of the three races,² it belongs to the Moghuls, one of whose tribes the ancient Tatārs were, with much greater propriety than to either of the others.

It is curious that, in like manner as in modern Europe, the name of Tatār, taken from a Moghul tribe, was bestowed on all the inhabitants of these vast regions; so, among the Arab conquerors of Asia, and the Arab and Persian geographers, they were all of them, Moghuls as well as Tūrks, known as Tūrks, by a name taken from a different race; while the country as far as China received the name of Tūrkestān. This singularity arose from a very obvious cause, the relative position of the Arabs and Tūrks. The country of Tūrkestān enclosed the Arab conquests in Māweralnaher on three sides. Being in immediate contact with Tūrki tribes, and unacquainted with the varieties of race or language among the more distant wanderers of the desert, whose manners, from similarity of situation, probably were, or at least to a stranger appeared to be, nearly the same, they applied the name of Tūrki to all the more distant nations in these quarters, though differing from each other in many important respects. It has already been remarked that the Indians use the term Moghul with still greater latitude.

But the difference between the Tūrks and Moghuls, if we may believe the best-informed travellers, is more marked than any that language can furnish. The Mongols, says Gmelin, have nothing in common with the Tartars (meaning the Tūrks) but their pastoral life, and a very remote resemblance in language. The Mongols differ, on the contrary, from all the races purely Tartar (Tūrki), and even from all the western nations, in their customs, in their political constitution, and, above all, in their features, as much as in Africa the Negro differs from the Moor. The description of their features, indeed, marks a race extremely different from the Tūrki. ‘Les traits caracteristiques de tous les visages Kalmucs et Mongoles sont des yeux dont le grand angle, placé obliquement en descendant vers le nez, est peu ouvert et charnu: des sourcils noirs peu garnis et formant un arc fort rabaissé; une conformation toute particuliere du nez, qui est generalement camus et ecrasé vers le front: les os de la joue saillans; la tête et le visage fort ronds. Ils ont ordinairement la prunelle fort brune, les levres grosses et charnues, le menton court, et les dents tres blanches, qu’ils conservent belles et saines jusques dans la vieillesse. Enfin leurs oreilles sont generalement toutes enormement grandes et detachées de la tête.’¹ Gmelin observes, that indeed ‘they have not the shadow of a tradition which could justify a suspicion that they ever composed one nation with the Tartars. The name of Tartar, or rather Tatār, is even a term of reproach among them; they derive it in their language from tatanoi, to draw together, to collect: which, to them, means little better than a robber.’² It is singular that a name thus rejected among the nations to whom it is applied should have had so much currency. The resemblance between Tartar and the infernal Tartarus, joined with the dread and horror in which the Tartar invaders were held, while they scattered dismay over Europe, probably, as has been well conjectured, preserved the name in the west.

While all accounts of the Moghuls concur in giving them something hideous in their appearance, the Tūrks, on the other hand, appear to have been rather distinguished as a comely race of men. The Persians, themselves very handsome, considered them as such. Hāfiz and the other Persian poets celebrate their beauty. They seem to have very much of the European features, but with more contracted eyes; a peculiarity which they probably owe to intermarriages with the Moghuls, or perhaps to something in their local situation in the deserts whence they issued. But, whatever may have been the difference between these two nations, certain it is that a marked distinction did exist between them from very early times.

The manners of these roving and pastoral tribes, as described by the ancient Greek and Roman writers, agree precisely with those of their descendants at the present day; but they have been painted with so much liveliness and truth by Gibbon, in a work which is in every one’s hands, that nothing need be added to what he has sketched. The first historical period, a knowledge of which is of consequence to the understanding of the following Memoirs, is that marked by the conquests of Chingiz Khan. In the earlier days of that Prince, the Kara Khitan was the most powerful Tartarian dynasty. Within the extensive range which their empire embraced, from the Chinese wall to the Ala Tāgh mountains, though the population was chiefly Tūrki, were included several tribes of different races, Tūrks, Uighurs, and Moghuls. Their power was broken in the year 1207 by the Naimans, another Tūrki race; and soon after, the Moghul tribes, impatient of a foreign yoke, rose under Chingiz Khan, shook off the authority of the Kara Khitans, and, under his conduct, rapidly subdued them in their turn. The name of Kara Khita indicates their connexion with Khita¹ or northern China, on which their chiefs acknowledged a dependence. It was, however, a dependence that originated in a previous conquest of that very country made by their predecessors the Khitans, or Leao, to whom the Chinese had paid tribute; and the dependence, in the first instance, was on the emperor rather than the empire. The title of Ung-Khan given to the chief prince of the Kara Khitans, and assumed by him, shows that they were not ashamed of their dependence on China; the title Ung being one purely Chinese, and bestowed on mandarins of the highest class. The Tūrki population at that time probably extended farther east than it does at the present day, and tradition informs us that the Kirghiz and some other tribes, now far to the west, then occupied ground close to the Chinese wall. They migrated westward, flying from the vengeance of their enemies when the Moghuls proved victorious. On the other hand we have heard of Kalmuks on the borders of Poland, and several Moghul tribes may now be found as far west as the Volga, and pushed in between Tūrki tribes, who still differ from them in aspect, language, and religion. These last appear to have been chiefly the tribes that were induced to settle in the west, after the conquests of Chingiz Khan. They accompanied that conqueror, and remained with his sons for their protection, or to overawe the conquered. One of the most remarkable of these was the grand tribe of Moghuls, who, in the age of Bābur, were settled, one branch on the territory of Tāshkend and the plains in its vicinity, in a country by Bābur called Moghulistān, and the other probably in the present Sungaria,¹ the Jetteh of the Institutes of Taimūr, or on the river Illi. They seem to have been part of the royal horde of Chaghatāi Khan, the son of Chingiz, who fixed his capital at Bishbāligh on the Illi; and many particulars of their manners, which continued extremely rude, are detailed in a very picturesque manner by Bābur in his Memoirs.

In the division of the empire of Chingiz Khan among his sons, one of them had the provinces to the east of the Tūrki frontier; Chaghatāi had the country westward as far as the Sea of Aral, and perhaps nearly to the river Jaik; while a third had all the other regions to the west, along the Caspian, and far into modern Russia. The country occupied by Chaghatāi Khan was long afterwards held by his descendants, and the inhabitants acquired the name of Jaghatāi or Chaghatāi Tūrks, and the country itself that of Jaghatāi. The connexion subsisting between the different tribes, in consequence of their having a point of union by being under the same government, seems to have favoured an approximation in language; and their dialect, which became highly cultivated, has continued down to the present day, and is still spoken, especially in towns and by the stationary Tūrks, over nearly the whole extent of the ancient Chaghatāi territories. The power of the Khans of Chaghatāi was nearly¹ lost before the age of Taimūr, who founded a new dynasty, the capital of which he fixed at Samarkand. He, in common with Chingiz Khan,² traced up his descent to Toumeneh Khan, a Moghul prince, so that both were of the royal race of the Moghuls; but the family and dependent tribe of Taimūr had been settled for nearly two centuries at Késh, to the south of Samarkand, and, being in the midst of a country inhabited by Tūrks, spoke the language, and had adopted the manners and feelings, of those among whom they dwelt. The families descended from Taimūr, therefore, though strictly Moghul, always regarded themselves as Tūrki.

Bābur had a close connexion with both races of Tartars. He traced up his descent on the father’s side in a direct line to the great Taimūr Beg, whence he always speaks of himself as being a Tūrk; while by the mother’s side he was sprung from Chingiz Khan, being the grandson of Yunis Khan, a celebrated prince of the Moghuls. All Bābur’s affections, however, were with the Tūrks, and he often speaks of the Moghuls with a mingled sentiment of hatred and contempt.

In spite of the various changes that have occurred in the course of six hundred years, the limits of the Tūrki language are still not very different from what they were in the days of the imperial Chingiz. These limits have already been roughly traced. The object of this Introduction does not require that we should enter farther into any details concerning these countries, the cradle of the Tartarian ancestors of Bābur. Our attention is more immediately called to that division of it generally called Great Bucharia, but which may with more propriety be denominated Uzbek Tūrkestān, which not only contains his hereditary kingdom, but is the scene of his early exploits. It will, in the first place, however, be necessary to give some idea of the high country of Pamīr and Little Tibet, whence the rivers flow that give their immediate form to all the surrounding countries.

It has been already remarked that the Himalaya Mountains, those of Tibet, Kashmīr, Hindū-kūsh, and Paropamisus, form a broad and lofty barrier, separating the countries of northern from those of southern Asia. The mountains, as they advance west, acquire a very great height; and measurements made at various places, towards Nepāl and Hindū-kūsh, by assigning to these ranges a height of upwards of 20,000 feet, would make them rank with the highest in the world.¹ Nearly parallel to this great chain, on the north, runs a considerable range, which has been called the Muz-tāgh, or Ice-Mountains. It extends on the east, at least from the northward of the Tibet range, near Leh or Ladāk, and has a north-westerly direction, skirting Eastern or Chinese Tūrkestān on the south, till it meets the Belūr,² or Belūt-tāgh Mountains, in the latitude of about 40° 45’, and longitude 71°; whence it seems to proceed on westward, as far as Khojend and Uratippa, under the name of the Asfera¹ mountains, and then divides into three or four principal branches, as will afterwards be mentioned. Connecting these two great ranges of Kashmīr or Hindū-kūsh, and of Muz-tāgh, a third range proceeds northward from that part of the Hindū-kūsh which lies near Kaferistān, in longitude 72°, and meets the Muz-tāgh, as already mentioned. This range is called by geographers the Belūr, or Belūt-tāgh. It seems to revive again to the north of the Muz-tāgh, running, under the name of the Ala,² or Alāk-tāgh, and according to others of the Ming Bulāk, or Arjun Hills, first to the north as far as north latitude 42°, and next to the westward towards Tāshkend, when it terminates in the desert of Aral, about the 65th or 66th degree of east longitude.

The extensive country which lies between the three grand ranges of mountains, the Kashmirian, Muz-tāgh, and Belūt-tāgh, does not properly belong to Tūrkestān, though some parts of it at the present day are traversed by Tūrki tribes. It seems rather, with the country immediately east of the Ala, or Alāk-tāgh, to have belonged to one of the mountain races which inhabit the grand range of Hindū-kūsh, in an independent state to this day. Bābur mentions a curious fact, which seems to throw some light on the ancient history and geography of that country. He tells us that the hill-country along the upper course of the Sind (or Indus) was formerly inhabited by a race of men called Kas; and he conjectures that, from a corruption of the name, the country of Kashmīr was so called, as being the country of the Kas.³ The conjecture is certainly happy, and the fact on which it is founded important; for its leads us farther, and permits us to believe that the Kasia Regio and the Kasii Montes of Ptolemy, beyond Mount Imaus, were inhabited by this same race of Kas, whose dominion, at some period, probably extended from Kāshghar to Kashmīr, in both of which countries they have left their name. The country at this day called Kāshkār, and included within the triangular range just described, probably derived its appellation from the same origin, being only a corruption of Kāshghar, within the territory of which it was long included, the name having survived the dominion.

The mountains by which this country is buttressed on every side are very lofty, and bear snow on their summits the greater part of the year. It has been conjectured that, if we except some parts of the Greater Tibet, it is the highest table-land in Asia. In confirmation of which, it has been observed that, from this high land, which, for want of a general denomination, may be called Upper Kāshghar, the rivers take their course in opposite directions, and to different seas: the Sind or Indus, and the Kāshkār or Cheghānserāi river, flow through the mountains to the south, and after uniting near Attok, proceed to the Indian Ocean; while the Amu, which originates from the snows and springs of Pushtekhar, in the same high table-land, pours down the western mountains of Belūt-tāgh and, after keeping for some time along the Hindū-kūsh range, pursues its course towards the Sea of Aral. No river is known to cross the Muz-tāgh; but the rivers which originate on its northern face proceed down to the desert and the lake of Lop-nor. Of these which flow north, some originate not very far from the Indus, which flows from the eastward by Ladāk, between the two ranges, in the earlier part of its course.

This elevated country of Upper Kāshghar, though plain when compared with the huge and broken hills which rise and inclose it on all sides, is, however, crossed in various directions by numerous hills and valleys. As the slope of the country is from the north and east, the Muz-tāgh, though certainly of less height than the other ranges, probably rises from a more elevated base. Of this high and thinly-peopled country, the south-west part is called Chitrāl, the north-west portion Pamīr, or the Plain, whence the whole country is often denominated. The country of the Dards lies in the south-east, and the rest of it is occupied by Little Tibet, which on the east stretches away into Great Tibet.

The country of Uzbek Tūrkestān may be considered as a large basin, hollowed out by the waters descending from the Paropamisan and Hindū-kūsh hills on the south, and those of Belūt-tāgh and Alā-tāgh on the east and north, but formed into two divisions by the Asfera mountains; on the south of which lies the vale of the Amu or Oxus, and on the north the vale of the Sirr or Jaxartes. Both of these great rivers, after receiving all the tributary streams that pour into them from the valleys and smaller branches of hills which they meet with in their course, force their way with difficulty through extensive sandy plains to the Sea of Aral. Uzbek Tūrkestān on the south, after the termination of the Paropamisan hills, may be considered as divided from Persian Khorāsān by a line beginning north of Herāt, in latitude 35°, and running north-west along the south verge of the Desert, so as to terminate on the Caspian, about latitude 39°. The Caspian forms its western boundary; and a line, from the Caspian to the Sea of Aral, and thence again to the Alā-tāgh, or Ming Bulāk mountains, which run north of the Sirr, or Jaxartes, as far as Tāshkend, completes its northern frontier.

That part of Uzbek Tūrkestān which lies south of the Asfera mountains may be divided into the countries south of the Amu, or Oxus, and those to the north of that river.

The divisions to the south of the Amu, including also those that extend to both its banks, or which are contained between its branches, are four: 1. Badakhshān; 2. Balkh; 3. Khwārizm; and, 4. The Deserts of the Turkomāns.

The divisions to the north of the Amu are five: 1. Khutlān; 2. Karatigīn; 3. Hissār, or Cheghāniān; 4. Késh, or Shaher e sebz, including Karshi and Khozār; and, 5. The Vale of Soghd, in which are the celebrated cities of Samarkand and Bokhara.

The countries lying along the Vale of the Sirr, or Jaxartes, may be considered as being six in number: 1. Ferghāna, now called Kokān and Nemengān; 2. Tāshkend; 3. Uratippa, or Ushrushna; 4. Ghaz, or the Aral desert; to which may perhaps be added, 5. Ilāk, extending between Uratippa and Tāshkend; and, lastly, the district of Tūrkestān Proper.

I. DIVISIONS SOUTH OF THE AMU

It may be convenient, in reviewing the different divisions of Uzbek Tūrkestān, to follow the course of the two great rivers, as they proceed from the hills to the Sea of Aral.

It will not be necessary to say much of the southern divisions, as they are, in general, sufficiently well known.

1. BADAKHSHĀN

Badakhshān is the first district to the south of the Amu. In the age of Bābur it was considered as being bounded on the south by Kaferistān, on the east by Upper Kāshghar, on the north by Khutlān, and on the west by Kunduz and Anderāb. It is chiefly mountainous, and appears to be formed by the course of two considerable rivers that unite to form the Amu. That river of the two which has the longest course and the greatest body of water is the Panj, called also the Hammū,¹ which appears to be the Harat of the Arabian geographers. It has lately been ascertained to rise in the high grounds east of the Belūt-tāgh range, issuing from under the snow of the lofty mountains of Pushtekhar, and working its way by the lower grounds of Shighnān and Derwāz. The second river, which is called the Kokcha, or Badakhshān river, is inferior in magnitude and length of course to the first, rising to the south of it, in that high mountainous ridge of Belūt-tāgh, which separates Badakhshān from Chitrāl, and the course of the Kāshkār or Cheghānserāi river; and on the north, divided from the course of the Panj by a chain of lofty hills, which intervene and form the ridge of the opposite valleys. Badakhshān Proper lies along the Kokcha river, though the dominion of the King of Badakhshān generally embraced all the country south of the Panj. The country north of the Panj belonged to Khutlān. The mountainous tracts near its source still called Wakhān, and by Marco Polo, Vochan, are probably part of the Wakhsh of the Oriental geographers. Besides the two great valleys which run along the river, through all the extent of the country, there are numerous others which wind among the hills, particularly on the south, towards Kaferistān, and which transmit several streams of considerable size to the larger rivers. The Panj and Kokcha unite just below the Badakhshān territory.

The soil in the valleys is fertile, and the country has always been famous for producing precious stones, especially rubies and turquoises. It was visited in the thirteenth century by Marco Polo, whose account of this and the neighbouring provinces is far more correct than has been generally supposed. It belonged to Bābur in the latter period of his life, but was not the scene of any of his more eminent exploits. He mentions that its native king claimed descent from Sikander, or Alexander the Great; a claim which is continued down to the present day. The family may, perhaps, be descended from the Grecian dynasty of Bactriana, which subsisted so long unconnected with the empire of Alexander’s successors.

2. BALKH

The country between Badakhshān and the desert of Khwārizm, on the east and west, and the Hindu-kūsh hills and the Amu, on the south and north, which, following Mr. Elphinstone, I include under the general name of Balkh,¹ comprehends a variety of districts that, at the present day, are under several different governments. They are chiefly valleys formed by rivers that descend from the Hindū-kūsh hills, and which, after forming glens and dales, frequently of considerable extent and fertility, discharge themselves into the Amu. The principal districts mentioned by Bābur are Anderāb, Tālikān, Kundūz, and Khulm, to the east; Balkh, in the centre, in a plain below the Dareh Gez, or Valley of Gez, and Shiberghān, Andekhūd, and Meimana, to the west. The eastern districts are generally level and fertile towards the mouth of their different rivers; but the valleys become narrower, and contract into glens as they are followed towards the sources of their parent streams on the Hindū-kūsh. The country round Balkh is level and rather sandy. The Dehās, or Balkhāb, as it approaches that city, after leaving the Dareh Gez, diminishes in size till it nearly disappears in the barren plain; and the western districts are ill watered, and indicate, by their sandy soil, the approach to the desert.

3. KHWĀRIZM¹

Bābur never visited this country, which lies near the mouth of the Amu or Oxus; and, being surrounded on all sides by desert, may be considered as an island formed in the waste by the Amu; by innumerable branches and cuts from which, the whole country is enriched. Its geography is very defective and erroneous, though considerable materials exist for correcting it. The Amu, soon after it passes the cultivated country of Urgenj, meets the sandy desert, in which it is nearly swallowed up, so that the river is of no great volume when it reaches the sea of Aral.

4. DESERT OF THE TURKOMĀNS

This desert, which extends from Khwārizm and the borders of Balkh to the Caspian, and from the limits of the Persian Khorasān to the sea of Aral, and the country of the Kirghiz, s inhabited by wandering Turkomāns,¹ some of whom own submission to the chiefs of Khwārizm, or Urgenj, and others to the Persians; while a considerable portion of them yield scarcely even a nominal submission to either.

II. DIVISIONS NORTH OF THE AMU

It has already been remarked, that these divisions are bounded on the east by the Belūt-tāgh mountains, which extend northward from the Hindū-kūsh to the Asfera mountains, are very lofty and precipitous, and bear snow on their summits the greater part of the year, some of them without intermission. They are probably very broken and abrupt, as no pass is known to cross them, except from Badakhshān. And it is remarkable that, in consequence of the height and abruptness of the mountains which enclose the country that has been denominated Uzbek Tūrkestān on the east, there appear in all ages to have been only two passes across them for caravans and armies, both of which are gained by following the course of the two great rivers, the Amu and the Sirr, to which the country appears to owe many of its most obvious features. One of these grand passes leads through Badakhshān, and is the route taken by the caravan of Kābul, and frequently by that of Samarkand and Bokhāra, on its road to Khutan and Kāshghar. This was the road followed by Marco Polo, in the thirteenth century, and more recently by De Goes, the last European who is known to have crossed these mountains. The second pass, which ascends by the sources of the Sirr, lies in the hills that separate Ferghāna from Kāshghar, to the eastward of Ush. This is the road by which the ambassadors of Shahrokh returned from China. Some inroads of Taimūr’s generals, by this pass, are recorded; and the caravan of Kāshghar seems to have taken this road in going between that city and Samarkand in the time of Bābur’s father, as it does at the present day. The route pursued by the caravan of Tāshkend, on its way to Kāshghar and China, is not quite clear; but, in some instances, it seems to have gone up the right bank of the Sirr; and after passing the Julgeh Ahengerān, or Blacksmiths’ Dale, to have crossed the range of hills that encloses Ferghāna on the west, near Akhsi; to have proceeded on thence to Uzkend, and from that place by the same pass as the caravan of Samarkand. There is, however, reason to imagine that the caravan of Tāshkend frequently kept a more northerly course, skirting the Ala-tāgh hills that enclose Ferghāna on the north and east; and that after rounding them, and passing near Almāligh, it proceeded straight to Kāshghar. These are the only routes by which Eastern Turkestān appears to have been reached from the west; and an attention to this fact will explain several difficulties in the earlier historians and travellers. If the supposed route to the north of the Ala-tāgh hills was really one of those followed by the caravan of Tāshkend, it will perhaps explain a difficulty stated by Major Rennell, in his Memoir of a Map of Hindostān. After mentioning that Kāshghar was twenty-five days’ journey from Samarkand, he observes that one account differs so much from the rest that he will draw no conclusion from it. It is one that makes twenty-seven journeys from Tāshkend to Kāshghar, ‘although Tāshkend is supposed to be five journeys nearer to it than Samarkand is.’ If the Tāshkend route led round the hills to the north of Ferghāna, whence the traveller had to return southward towards Kāshghar, the itinerary in question will not be so inconsistent with the others as it might at first seem to be.

1. KHUTLĀN

The two districts of Khutlān and Karatigīn, which stretch along the Belūt-tāgh mountains, are more inaccessible and less known than most of the others. The name of Khutl, or Khutlān, does not appear to be known at the present day; but it was applied in the time of Bābur, and as far back as the age of Ibn Haukal, to the country lying between the upper branch of the Amu, called Harat, or Panj, which divided it from Badakhshān on the south; the Wakhshāb or Surkhrūd, which separated it from Cheghāniān or Hissār on the west; the hill country of Karatigīn on the north; and the Belūt-tāgh on the east. Khutlān is broken in all quarters by hills. Its few valleys are said to be narrow, and overhung with lofty mountains. The glens of Shighnān and Derwāz, which lie near the source of the Panj, are fertile. The country of Wakhsh, which is always joined with Khutlān by the earlier geographers, probably extended between Khutlān and Karatigīn, or may have included Karatigīn itself. Its name is still to be found not only in the uncertain district of Wakhīka, but in the country of Wakhān, the Vochan of Marco Polo, which lies above Badakhshān, near the source of the Panj, close upon Pushtekhar. The name Wakhshāb, anciently given to the river which divided Cheghāniān from Khutlān, is said, by Ibn Haukal, to be derived from that of the country of Wakhsh, where it originates. It ran by Weishgird, the ancient capital of the country, and joined the Amu above Kobādiān. On this river was the Pul-e-sangīn, or Stone-bridge, so often mentioned in the history of Taimūr Beg. While some circumstances seem to point to the river which joins the Amu above Kobādiān, opposite to Kunduz, others certainly accord much better with the Surkh-āb, or the river of Karatigīn, which has a course of upwards of 160 miles before it falls into the Amu. The Wakhi language still remains in many districts in the hills of Badakhshān and Khutlān; and it is not improbable that the Wakhi or Wakhshi race were the most ancient inhabitants of this hilly region. Many of the rivers that flow into the Amu in the earlier part of its course descend from the hill-country of Khutlān. It is said to have been the seat of a splendid dynasty, before the Musulman conquest; and Abulfida¹ mentions the magnificent palaces of its kings. In Bābur’s time it was generally subject to Hissār.

2. KARATIGĪN

This country, which is seldom mentioned in history, lies along the southern range of the Asfera mountains, and appears to extend, on the east, as far as those of Belūt-tāgh; on the south, it has part of Khutlān and Wakhīka, and the country of Hissār; on the west, it extends to the hill-districts of Uratippa and Yār-Ailāk. It is altogether mountainous. The height of the Asfera and Belūt-tāgh mountains, the former covered with perpetual snow, prevents it from having much communication with the countries to the north and east.

3. HISSĀR

Before proceeding to make any remarks on this district, it is necessary to point out, in a few words, the course taken by the branches of the Asfera mountains, when they diverge, somewhat to the east of the longitude of Khojend, as has been already mentioned. All along the south of Ferghāna, their summits are everywhere covered with perpetual snow. As they approach Uratippa, they appear suddenly to lose their height, and to divide into three or perhaps four branches. One of these, running south by Derbend or Kohlūgha (the Iron Gate), under the name of Kara-tāgh, or the Black mountains,¹ divides the country of Hissār from that of Késh. The northern part of this range, as described by Bābur, is lofty and precipitous in the extreme; but it evidently declines in height as it approaches the desert along the Amu, where it probably altogether disappears. The second branch, running south-west from Karatigīn, extends to the south of Samarkand and Bokhāra, though much inferior in height to the former, and seems, like it, to die away in the desert towards the Amu. This may be called the Késh branch, and the country between it and the Kara-tāgh forms the territories of Késh and Karshi. The hill between Samarkand and Késh is, by Sherīfeddīn, called the hill of Késh. Ibn Haukal tells us¹ that the mountain of Zarkah, as he calls the same range, runs from Bokhāra, between Samarkand and Késh, joins the border of Ferghāna, and goes on towards the border of Chīn. The Arabian geographer, therefore, evidently considered the range south of Samarkand as connected with the Asfera, and probably with the Muz-tāgh ranges. The third range, called the Ak-tāgh, or Ak-kāya, the white mountains, and by the Arabian geographers² Butum, or Al-Butum,² extending to the westward, runs to the north of Samarkand and Bokhāra, and declines down to the desert. Where it leaves the Asfera mountains it forms, with the Kara-tāgh and Késh hills, the country of Yār-ailāk, and, lower down, one boundary of the celebrated valley of Soghd. This branch is lofty, and bears snow in its hollows all the year. The fourth branch is that which appears to run, but very ruggedly and uncertainly, to the north-west, through the country of Uratippa. It slopes down towards the sea of Aral, and a portion either of this, or of the last branch, crosses the Amu below the cultivated country of Khwārizm, before that river works its way into the sea of Aral. This may be called the Uratippa branch, as that country lies chiefly among its offsets, and towards the Ak-tāgh hills. The Uratippa hills approach very closely to the Sirr, or Jaxartes.

The country of Hissār, which was often traversed by Bābur, and which, for some years in the middle period of his life, formed his head-quarters, is by the Arabian geographers denominated Saghāniān, while the Persians called it Cheghāniān and Jeghāniān, from the city of that name which lies on the Cheghān-rūd, more frequently, however, called the river of Cheghāniān. This country received, in later times, the name of Hissār (or the Castle), from the fort of Hissār-Shādmān, which was long the seat of government of all the neighbouring regions. At the present day, this country is known by the name of Deh-nau (or New-Town), from a town of that name, where the chief resides; and in general it may be remarked that all over the East, where the governments are fluctuating, there is a disposition to designate the government rather by the name of the city where the king or governor resides, than by a general name taken from the whole country which he governs. And, in like manner, as to rivers, and ranges of mountains, it is seldom, except in books, that they have any general name; the former are usually described by the name of the nearest large town, the latter by that of some remarkable summit, and consequently change their denomination many times in their course. Frequent instances of this kind will be found in the Memoirs of Bābur.

Hissār, on the south, was bounded by the river Amu or Oxus, on the east by the hill country of Wakhsh and Khutlān, from which it was divided by the Surkhrūd or Karatigīn river, formerly called the Wakhshāb, on the north by Karatigīn, and on the west by the Kara-tāgh mountains. It is hilly, but not mountainous, in its chief extent. The soil is in general sandy, and inclining to degenerate into desert; but, being on the whole well watered, is capable of high cultivation. The river Weish or Wakhshāb, which proceeds from the north-west, joins the Oxus considerably to the east of Kobādiān. The river of Cheghāniān, and that of Hissār or Kafernihān, are the other streams of chief note in this district. In the days of Bābur, the most important places in this division were Hissār, Cheghāniān, Kobādiān and Termez. The city of Termez or Termed has always been famous as covering the best passage over the Amu; but somewhat higher up is the passage of Ubāj, lying between Cheghāniān and Khulm, which is several times mentioned, both in Bābur’s Memoirs and in the History of Taimūr. The country towards Weishgird, where the natives were protected by the sudden rise of the hills, was the scene of many bloody battles between the ancient inhabitants and the Arabs, during their conquest of Māweralnaher. The inhabitants of the hill countries were never fully subdued. Bābur gives a very particular account of his passage up one of the long valleys of this country, called the valley of Kāmrūd, which he ascended in his flight from Hissār to Yār-ailāk, after his defeat near Samarkand. The valley of Kāmrūd leads up to the summit of the Kara-tāgh range.

4. KÉSH

This division has already been described as bounded on the east by the Kara-tāgh mountains dividing it from Hissār; on the south by the Amu or Oxus; and on the north and west by the Késh hills, which divide it from Yār-ailāk and the valley of Soghd.

The chief cities now, and they are the same that existed in the time of Bābur, are Késh, also called Shahr-i-sabz (or the Green City), and to the south Karshi, also called Nakhsheb, and by the Arabs Nasef. Khozār also has always been a place of consequence, and lies south-east of Karshi, in a desert tract. The country round Késh is uncommonly fertile, full of streams, and rather marshy, but degenerates as it approaches the Amu, and becomes a perfect desert, insomuch that the rivers of this district disappear before reaching that great river. The famous Pass of Kohlūgha (the Iron Gate), or Derbend, lies in the hills between Késh and Hissār. Fazlullah¹ pretends that it was cut in the rock, which only proves that it was narrow and difficult, and perhaps improved by art. Near Késh, the native town of the great Taimūr, is the plain of Akiār, where, close by the river Koshka, were held the Kurultais or annual reviews of his armies, and what have been called the diets of his states. It was celebrated for its beautiful verdure and the rich profusion of its flowers.

5. SAMARKAND AND BOKHĀRA

The country which composes the territory of these famous cities, has always been deemed one of the most fertile and beautiful in the world. It lies between the Késh hills on the south, the Desert of Khwārizm on the west, and the Uratippa and Ak-tāgh mountains dividing it from Uratippa, on the north. On the east, it has the hill country of Karatigīn and the Kara-tāgh mountains. It is traversed, in nearly its whole extent, by the Kohik or Zarefshān¹ river, which, coming from the north-east angle of the hills that rise out of Karatigīn, flows down by Yār-ailāk to Samarkand and the vale of Soghd, passing to the north and west of Bokhāra, considerably below which the small part of it that is not swallowed up in the sand runs into the Amu. The country near the sources of the Kohik is hilly and barren, and in the time of Bābur was full of petty forts, especially along the skirts of the hills. This is the district so often mentioned under the name of Yār-ailāk or Bār-ailāk. It seems to comprise the countries at the present day called Karatippa and Urgūl. Uratippa extends over the opposite side of the hills, to the north-west, except only the district called the Ailāks of Uratippa, which is higher up on the same side of the hills, and not far distant from Yar-ailāk. The vale of Soghd, which commences lower down² than the Ailāks, is an extensive plain, a great part of which is admirably watered and cultivated, by means of cuts from the river. Bābur has given so correct and detailed an account of this whole country in his Memoirs that little need be added regarding it. This tract of plain is the Sogdiana of the ancients, so called from the river Soghd, the ancient name of the Kohik. Samarkand was a city of note at least as far back as the time of Alexander the Great, when it was known under the name of Marakanda, a name which may lead us to suspect that even then the country had been overrun by Tūrki³ tribes. The country beyond the Amu, called by the Arabs Māweralnaher (i.e. beyond the river), was conquered by them as early as the years 87, 88, and 89 of the Hijira; and their geographers present us with the most dazzling picture of its prosperity at an early period. Ibn Haukal, who is supposed to have lived in the tenth century, speaks of the province as one of the most flourishing and productive in the world. The hospitality of the inhabitants he describes, from his personal observation, as corresponding to the abundance that prevailed. The fortunate situation of the country, and the protection which it enjoyed under the Arabian Khalifs, produced their ordinary effects, and the arts of civilization, the civilities of social life, and the study of literature, all made a distinguished progress. We are told that the inhabitants were fond of applying their wealth to the erection of caravanserais or inns, to the building of bridges and similar works, and that there was no town or stage in Māweralnaher without a convenient inn or stage-house¹ for the purpose of accommodating travellers with every necessary. One of the governors of Māweralnaher, which included all the Arabian conquests north of the Amu, boasted, probably with considerable exaggeration, that he could send to war three hundred thousand horse, and the same number of foot, whose absence would not be felt in the country. The Vale of Soghd was reckoned one of the three paradises of the world, the Rūd-Ābileh and the Ghūteh of Damascus² being the other two; over both of which, however, Ibn Haukal assigns it the decided preference, both as to beauty and salubrity. The glowing description which he gives of it in the tenth century is confirmed by Abulfida in the beginning of the fourteenth; and early in the sixteenth, Bābur informs us, that there was no more delightful country in the world. The beauty and wealth of these cities had rendered the names of Samarkand and Bokhāra proverbial among the poets of Persia. Several streams from the hills, on both sides, join the Kohik in its course. As you recede from the Soghd river or approach the Amu, the soil becomes sandy and desert.

The chief cities in the days of Bābur, as at the present time, were Samarkand and Bokhāra. The former lies on the south of the Kohik on a rising ground, and has always been very extensive, the fortifications having varied, by different accounts, from eight to five miles in circumference; but a great part of this space was occupied by gardens. When D’Herbelot and Petis de la Croix¹ give the city a compass of twelve farsangs, or forty-eight miles, they have not observed that the whole garden-grounds around it must have been included in the range. A wall one hundred and twenty farsangs in length, said to have been built by Gushtasp, king of Persia, to check the incursions of the Tūrks, and to protect the province of Samarkand, is probably fabulous, no notice being taken of any remains of it in latter times. Yet a similar one certainly existed, lower down the river, for the defence of the highly-cultivated districts of Bokhāra.

A town of considerable note in the northern part of the country is Jizzikh or Jizik, better known in history by the name of Dizak. It lies towards the Ak-tāgh mountains, on the road to the Pass of Ak-Kūtel. To the south of Jizzikh, on the road to Samarkand, is Shirāz, which has long been in ruins.

Down the river, below Samarkand, was the town of Sir-e-pul (or Bridgend), so frequently mentioned by Bābur. It is probably the place noticed by Abulfida under the name of Khushūfaghan,² and by the Arabs called Rās-al-kantara, a translation of its Persian name.

The town and castle of Dabūsi or Dabūsīa, often mentioned in the history of Bokhāra, lie between that city and Samarkand.

The city of Bokhāra, which is now the capital of the country, as it frequently was in former times, has given its name in Europe to the countries of Great and Little Bucharia. These names, however, are unknown in Asia, the name of Bokhāra being confined to the city of that name and the country subject to it. It lies far down in the Valley of Soghd, in the middle of a rich country intersected by numerous water-courses. It is said, at the present day, to contain a hundred thousand inhabitants, and it is, perhaps, the most eminent seat of Musulman learning now existing. Thompson, who visited it in 1740, gives an amusing account of the city and its trade.¹ It was visited by Jenkinson in the reign of Queen Elizabeth,² and in 1812 by Izzet ullah, whose account of its present state is highly interesting.

The fort of Ghajhdewān, which lies north-west of Bokhāra, close on the desert of Khwārizm, is remarkable for a great defeat sustained by Bābur and his Persian auxiliaries, when he was compelled to raise the siege.

The hills of Nūrattāu lie ten miles north from Bokhāra, and run from east to west for about twenty-four miles. This is probably the Nūr of the Arabian geographers, with the addition of tau, a hill.

Miānkāl, which is several times mentioned by Bābur, includes Katta-Kurghān, Yung-Kurghān, Panjshembeh, Khattichi, and some other places on both sides of the Kohik near Dabūsi.

But the minuteness of Bābur’s own description of the country, its rivers and mountains, precludes the necessity of any further remarks.

III. COUNTRIES ALONG THE SIRR,
OR JAXARTES

The countries along the Sirr have always been much less considerable than those on the Amu. The Sirr, or Jaxartes, rises among the lofty mountains which divide Ferghāna from Kāshghar. The chief source appears to lie east from Ush, nearly two degrees. On the west side of the Ala-tāgh range are the sources of the Sirr, and on the east side, at no great distance, is the source of the Kāshghar river. The Sirr, after dividing Ferghāna, takes a turn to the north-west, passes to the south of Tāshkend, and, flowing down through the sandy desert, is nearly lost in the sands before it reaches the Sea of Aral.

1. FERGHĀNA

The particular account of this country with which the Memoirs of Bābur open renders it needless to enter into any description of it. It now forms the powerful kingdom of Khokand, whose capital, of the same name, is the ancient Khuakend, lying between Khojend and Akhsi. Though Ferghāna is in general fertile, yet several small deserts are to be found within its extent. It is divided into two parts by the Sirr. That on the left bank has for its boundary on the south the snowy mountains of Asfera, which on their northern face slope down into the hill countries of Wadil, Warukh,¹ Hushiār, Sukh, &c. while their southern side forms the frontier of Karatigīn. On the west it has Uratippa, from which it is divided by the river Aksū, which flows into the Sirr. The portion of Ferghāna on the right bank of the Sirr has for its western boundary a range of hills running south from the Ala-tāgh, past Akhsi to Khojend, on the Sirr, and dividing Ferghāna from Tāshkend. The north appears to be protected by the lofty and barren mountains called Ala-tāgh, which are probably always covered with snow, and which also wind round to its eastern frontier, where they separate it from the territory of Kāshghar. The country north of the Sirr, which formerly contained Akhsi and Kāsān, is now called Nemengān. The Ala-tāgh mountains are generally represented as being joined, on their north-east angle, by a range of mountains running far eastward, and connecting them with those of Ulugh-tāgh. None of them, however, are probably high, where they join in with the hills that bound Ferghāna, as we find that the Kirghiz pass freely at all seasons, on the north and east of that country, from Tāshkend to the vicinity of Kāshghar; and the whole tract is, indeed, generally designated as belonging to the same pastoral range: thus, in the accounts of the Russian travellers, when speaking of the Great Horde of Kirghiz, we find Kāshghar, Tāshkend, and Otrār put together, as constituting their range along the Ala, or Alak-tāgh mountains, without adverting to any intervening hills. One Uzbek traveller, from whom I had an account of his journey from Kāshghar to Astrakhān, mentioned that he passed some broad low hills near Almāligh; so that, if any connecting range runs from the Ala-tāgh to the Ulugh-tāgh, it is probably a very low one, and easily surmounted.

Bābur justly describes his native country as encircled with hills on every side except towards Khojend, where, however, the opening between the hills and the Sirr is very narrow.

Abulfida mentions that in the mountains of Ferghāna they have black stones which burn like charcoal, and, when kindled, afford a very intense heat. The fact of the existence of coal in the Ala-tāgh range, and to the east of it, is confirmed by recent travellers. It is found in great plenty, and forms the ordinary fuel of the natives.

2. TĀSHKEND

The country of Tāshkend lies along the north bank of the Sirr, having that river on the south, and the Ala-tāgh mountains, running parallel to it, on the greater part of its northern frontier; the hills near Akhsi bound it on the east, and the desert of the Kara Kilpāks on the west. The ancient Tūrkestān proper stretched considerably to the north and westward of this country. The range of Ala-tāgh mountains which extend along its northern boundary, run from east to west, at no great distance from the Sirr, and decline in height toward the western desert. The inferior range of hills that run from the Ala-tāgh, between Tāshkend and Akhsi, within eight miles of the latter place,¹ we find several times crossed by armies that marched from Tāshkend to Kāsān, Akhsi, and the northern provinces of Ferghāna. In this route lies the Julgeh Ahengerān, or Ironsmiths’ Dale, and Kundezlik and Amāni, so often mentioned in the Memoirs of Bābur. It was probably by this road that the caravan of Tāshkend proceeded to Uzkend, on the route to Kāshghar; though it appears sometimes to have gone to Kāshghar by keeping to the north of the Ala-tāgh hills. The road generally pursued from Tāshkend to Akhsi did not follow the course of the Sirr, but went eastward directly towards Akhsi, cutting off, to the south, the large tract of country surrounded on three sides by the river which runs south-west from Akhsi to Khojend, and north-west from Khojend to Tāshkend. The city of Shahrokhīa lay between Khojend and Tāshkend, on the Sirr, while Seirām lay north-west of Tāshkend, still lower down. Magnificent accounts of the wealth, cultivation, and populousness of Tāshkend, and the country along the rich banks of the Sirr, in the time of the Arabs, and of the Khwārizmian dynasty, are given by Ibn Haukal, Abulfida, and the historians of Chingiz Khan; and the many works of learning and science which issued from this country at that era sufficiently attest that these praises were not altogether gratuitous. The dynasty of Khwārizmian kings, destroyed by Chingiz Khan, were eminent encouragers of letters. In Bābur’s time, Tāshkend and Shahrokhīa were its chief towns. A considerable traffic has of late years been carried on at Tāshkend, between the Russians and the inhabitants of Bokhāra, but the country is not in a flourishing state. The range of the Great Horde of the Kirghiz extends from Tāshkend all round the Ala-tāgh mountains, through the western part of the country of Kāshghar and Yārkend, and even into Upper Kāshghar and Pamīr, close to Derwāz and Badakhshān. They are Tūrks, and speak a dialect of the Tūrki language, though probably mingled with Moghul words.

3. URATIPPA

The country of Uratippa, which is also called Ustrūsh, Ustrūshta, Setrūshta, Isterūshān, and Ushrūshna, is the hilly tract which lies west of Khojend, whence it is separated by the river Aksū. It has that river and the Asfera mountains, including part of Karatigīn, on the east; on the south-east, in the days of Bābur, it seems to have stretched over to the Kara-tāgh mountains, which divided it from Hissār, while Yār-ailāk completed its boundary in that quarter. On the south, the Ak-tāgh and Uratippa mountains divided it from Samarkand and Bokhāra; on the north, the Sirr, and probably the districts of Ilāk, separate it from Tāshkend; and on the west it has the desert of Ghaz (by Abulfida, called Ghazna), or the Kara Kilpāks, towards the sea of Aral. It is full of broken hill and dale, and anciently was studded with small and nearly independent castles, each of which had its separate district. The slope of country is towards the desert of Aral. It is now subject to Bokhāra. Uratippa and Ramīn, or Zamīn, are its chief towns. It has been celebrated from early ages for the quantity of sal ammoniac which it produces in some natural caverns in the hills. It has no considerable river, but several smaller streams, most of which probably disappear in the sandy desert. In all our maps, the Kizil (or Red River) is made to rise in the hill country of Uratippa, and to proceed downward to join the Amu, below the cultivated country of Khwārizm. Yet Ibn Haukal tells us that in all Setrushta (or Uratippa) there is not one river considerable enough to admit of the plying of boats; and the river, after leaving Uratippa, would have to run for several days’ journey through a desert sand. It rather seems that no such separate river exists; but that the Kizil is only a branch that proceeds from, and returns to, the Amu. Hazārasp, which certainly stands on the Amu, is said to lie on the north side of the Kizil. This must be just where the Kizil runs off from the great river. Kāt, or Kāth, the old capital of Khwārizm, which was six farsangs, or twenty-four miles, from Hazārasp down the Amu, and certainly stood on that river, is, however, said to lie on the north side of the Kizil. The different branches of the Amu, in passing through Khwārizm, or Urgenj, have different names, like the various branches of the Ganges in Bengal. This, with some other causes, has spread a good deal of confusion over the geography of the former country. In the instance in question, a great river being found, and its connexion with the Amu not being known, it was natural to search for its sources in the hills to the east.

4. THE DESERT OF THE KARA KILPĀKS

The desert country which is bounded by the sea of Aral on the west, the river Sirr on the north, Uratippa on the east, and Bokhāra and Khwārizm on the south, is now traversed by the wandering Tūrki tribe of Kara Kilpāks¹ (or Black Bonnets), who, according to the general opinion, are Turkomāns, though some accounts describe them as Uzbeks. This district, which was, by the Arabian geographers, called Ghaz, and sometimes, if we may trust the readings of the manuscripts, Ghaznah, probably extends a little to the north, beyond the place where the Sirr loses itself in the sand. These wanderers have a considerable range, but are few in number. The desert is six or seven days’ journey from east to west, and upwards of ten from north to south.